Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem are you solving?
Mitai: Have you ever wondered, why the cabin crew tells you to turn off your electronic devices before takeoff and landing? One of the reasons is that radio waves, or electromagnetic waves, from electronic devices may interrupt vital components of airplanes and therefore pose a risk to avionics technology on the plane.
This does not only apply for electronics in airplanes, but for all types of electronic devices. Those can disturb other electronic devices or also be disturbed by them. Therefore, all electronic devices for all types of applications must comply to specific Electro Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) regulations.
Usually, electronic devices are tested in a special laboratory environment regarding EMC when the first hardware is available. In more than 90 percent of the cases, new designs of electronic products fail EMC certification and design engineers need to go all the way back and redesign their product to fulfill EMC requirements. So, EMC compliance has significant impact on costs and time to market for new products.
We at Mitai are on a mission to solve EMC issues for electronic companies in their designs, before the first hardware is tested in the lab. Our unique software solution enables electronics design engineers to pass EMC right first time.
Mitai resulted out of the incubator program within TDK
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Mitai: Mitai’s software solution is unique, as it aims to detect EMC issues before they occur during testing. To achieve this, many designs, which did not pass, and also those which passed EMC compliance testing in the past, were analyzed by our experts. Additionally, years of experience in tackling EMC problems of senior design engineers were translated into our software. With this multi-level approach, electronic design engineers are supported to develop their designs market ready and faster than before. With its flexible setup possibilities, Mitai’s solution supports the product development process at different stages.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Mitai: Mitai as a startup resulted out of the global incubator program within TDK. In the TDK global incubator program ideas for new businesses are explored in a protected environment and with the support of a professional business development team. Out of about 60 ideas from staff across all parts of TDK, Mitai’s idea on helping customers in all electronic sectors to avoid EMC issues was chosen to be incubated. The main aspect of our idea was, how we could help customers solving their EMC issues, not only with EMC components, which is one of the core businesses of TDK, but in a different way. With our idea we targeted an approach beyond EMC components.
“The EMC topic is highly complex”
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Mitai: The EMC topic is highly complex. Finding EMC issues in the design data and giving recommendations how to solve those issues is even more complex and requires a lot of experience in the EMC field, which TDK has. Our biggest challenge at Mitai is to put all the EMC experience into a software solution. At Mitai, the EMC experts must work very close with the software engineers in order to reduce the complexity of EMC for our customers, so they can benefit from our software solution. Key is to speak the language of both domains: electric & software engineering.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, and where in five years?
Mitai: Our one-year goal is to have first customers using our service in their daily development. We help them to save a lot of time and money by doing EMC design right first time.
Our five-years goal is to be the industry standard to achieve first time right EMC compliance for designing electronic products.
Mitai wants to become the world’s most important player in EMC
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Mitai: Munich is the right place for us to be now. It is the perfect location to find the right talents. There are many startups in the field of electrical engineering and manufacturing of electronic products, we can partner with. In Munich there are top universities and large corporations in the field of electrical engineering. This provides us with a strong network to collaborate with.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Mitai: We see us more as a hidden champion than a shooting star. We just started Mitai on April 1st, 2022. We are still close to TDK and not visible as standalone company. Our goal is to establish Mitai as a new brand under TDK. Together we want to become the world’s most important player in EMC.