Have dough, can produce chappati maker

SINGAPORE - Lovers of chappati will be able to enjoy freshly made slices of the Indian flatbread at home when an automatic maker hits the market here later this year.

Called the Rotimatic, it churns out one hot chappati a minute - and is said to be the first machine of its type in the world.

Developing and producing the Rotimatic was not cheap or easy.

The local start-up Zimplistic faced hefty research and development costs and some thorny technical issues in the product design.

Spring Singapore has stepped in to provide a grant to help the firm see the project to fruition.

Zimplistic is one of 15 local start-ups that have received grants totalling $6 million from Spring Singapore. The other 14 span diverse industries, from medical devices and health care to infocommunications, and water and environment.

The grants were made under Spring's Technology Enterprise Commercialisation Scheme (Tecs) which aims to bring potentially ground-breaking technologies closer to market.

Spring assistant chief executive officer Chew Mok Lee said tech start-ups face difficulties in commercialising their products or services, owing to the risks involved in the R&D of new technologies.

"The Tecs provides funding during the critical pre-market stages to bridge the gap between an innovative technology idea and the market," she said in a media release on Thursday.

The grants were either $250,000 for the companies to prove that their ideas work, or $500,000 for further development or to commercialise them.

Since Tecs was set up in 2008, more than $50 million in grants has been awarded to over 150 companies, including biomedical firm Clearbridge Biomedics and medical device firm Endomaster.

Zimplistic co-founder Rishi Kumar told The Straits Times it is now working with a large Singapore-listed electronics manufacturing company to make the Rotimatic.

He said the company had worked with the manufacturer to design a special process to make the Rotimatic, which uses both metal and plastic parts.

Another challenge was that some parts for the machine were not available commercially and had to be developed by Zimplistic.

One example is technology that senses the flour.

"This was crucial. It must be able to weigh a small portion of flour and water. There was none in the world that could do it for one chappati. So we developed our own."

Spring's grant worth about $500,000 has helped the company develop the sensing technology, allowing it to push ahead with the commercialisation of the Rotimatic.

Mr Kumar co-founded the company with his wife Pranoti Israni about four years ago.

They have two patents for their invention, which is the first automatic machine to make ready-to-eat chappati from flour. The machine can also make tortillas.

The Rotimatic is expected to be sold in the second half of the year. No details on pricing are available yet.

For therapy management device maker T.Ware, the Spring grant will help it build and test its T.Jacket, designed to calm autism patients, especially children who are suffering from fits.

The jacket simulates deep pressure massage which a therapist can use by varying the rhythm and pressure of the "hug".

Founder James Teh told The Straits Times: "The $250,000 grant is crucial because it will help us validate our idea. This is an important point in time for us. After proving our idea can work, we can then raise funding from investors to commercialise T.Jacket."

The 18-month old company, which licensed the technology from the National University of Singapore, will start testing its jacket on autistic children at the THK Eipic Centres in the middle of this year.

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