Bob Porooshani has always had a passion for design. As a student of electrical engineering, and as a self-professed lover of the arts and the world of luxury, he has developed a variety of products for his own personal interests. He has spent his entire career developing, selling, and marketing innovative electronic products as a General Manager at Epson and as VP of Sales and Marketing at Chirp Microsystems.
Then one day, Porooshani came across an opportunity. He was studying the next generation of wireless charging, a technology that will charge devices wirelessly through the air instead of a traditional charging pad. In his estimation, the technology is still too far away — he says it will take another 5-7 years to enter the consumer market — “yet this leaves an opportunity open to capitalize on the current state of wireless charging technology,” he adds.
Porooshani seized the opportunity by creating Scintilla Technologies. Even though he says there is an abundance of improvements and innovations left to be made to the existing technology, in developing his product, the Scintilla Office Collection — a luxury wireless charger designed for its aesthetic appeal — Porooshani had to solve the problems that plagued similar Qi chargers, such as heat dissipation and interference caused by having multiple devices charging around multiple Qi charging coils and pads.
Porooshani has a patent pending on its wirelessly charging, portable wireless power bank, which both charges and is charged wirelessly
There are a billion phones shipped every year. Add in the wearables, smart watches, earbuds, and other gadgets with wireless charging capabilities, and it is clear to Porooshani that wireless charging “is going to grow by leaps and bounds.” It’s also clear to him that every other wireless charger, that he has seen, has been marketed as an accessory to some main device, like a phone, rather than as a centerpiece.
“An accessory today, as a wireless charger, no longer sits behind your chair or against the wall,” Porooshani says. “It sits on your desk or on your counter. It’s now part of the décor — the Feng Shui of your environment.”
In his mind, there was an enormous opportunity to create a wireless charger that was aesthetically pleasing, was made of high-quality materials and could charge all devices, eliminating the wire and cable clutter in every room.
The result was the Scintilla Office Collection, which debuts in Q2 2020. The device has been designed with a variety of styles of desks, with office decor in mind, and the result is something that Porooshani says will be worth a high-asking price to luxury-minded individuals.
The price is not locked in yet: Porooshani says that the Scintilla Office Collection will likely cost in the $400 range. He has plans to release other models of the wireless charging hubs and platforms with different cost models for the future bedroom collection, and a leather version of the office collection.
The Scintilla Office Collection shares many of its design elements with the iPhone, with its Gorilla Glass faceplates and anodized aluminum casing. The charger features four wireless chargers, a smart-watch charger, a stand for a tablet, a key/phone finder, its patented portable wireless power bank, two USB chargers, and interestingly, two ports for its own power. The reason for having two different ports to plug in the charger is, once again, for aesthetic appeal, as different people might want the charger on one side of their desk or the other. Having two power ports allows wires to be well managed regardless of where one puts their charger.
Originally, Porooshani wanted the Scintilla Office Collection to have a modular design, but he and his team realized that such a device would be a manufacturing nightmare. So, he changed the design, bringing in all of the modules together under one platform.
Scintilla Technologies hopes to land $2-3M in funding in its second round of investments. Its first round netted $370,000.
“I’m confident the market for our products is there,” he says. “We thought if there were 2-3 million luxury buyers in the world, we could create a concrete business model reaching 1-2 percent of these luxury buyers. That was the concept I started this company with. But as we looked deeper, we realized there are 400 million luxury buyers today. Two hundred million of them are true luxury buyers, meaning they consistently spend money on luxury items. Our target market turns out to be 100 times larger than originally expected. Now anyone can see what a great opporutnity this really is”.
Porooshani says his product is unique, yet he knows competition will inevitably catch up, if not to Scintilla’s craftsmanship, then to its market. Nevertheless, he is not concerned. Scintilla plans to release new platforms and collections every 3-6 months. In addition to selling the products online, Porooshani also hopes to sell them in luxury retail stores, and to eventually collaborate with other luxury brands. If nothing else, Porooshani says that “ we can achieve more when we chase our own dream instead of competition, and if the competition catches up to Scintilla, it will certainly validate the potential of this market.”
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