BOSTON — Promwad Innovation, an independent design house for electronics products based in Minsk, Belarus, has secured customers in North America and Europe and plans to expand into Russia.

In September, the company finished a prototype for a multimedia control panel based on the Cirrus Logic EP9307 processor running under an embedded Linux operating system. The home-automation touchscreen panel is for a "Smart Home systems control unit developed by Swiss startup Incyma.

Promwad also developed the circuit board for a universal audio and video streaming player based on the Blackfin ADSP-BF533 processor for an unnamed Canadian company.

"We have finished projects for clients from Canada and Switzerland," said CEO Roman Pakholkov. "We now have in the company portfolio seven projects we can present as 'full cycle' projects * built from scratch."

As a design house specializing in hardware, embedded software and FPGA programming, Promwad is an anomaly in Belarus, where tech activity is mainly software outsourcing.

The company was founded in 2004 by a team of specialists who had worked together on fiber optic project. Pakholkov, who had managed the project, decided to start an independent design house because it would push the company to stay on top of design developments.

A standalone design house was a leap of logic because in the former USSR, Belarus developed electronics in huge vertically-integrated enterprises, he said.

But the challenge attracted embedded and system architecture engineers and specialists from scientific institutes and research labs in Belarus. The company managed to secure work in Eastern Europe and grew from 20 employees in 2007 to 35 today. Almost all are engineers.

In 2009, Promwad plans to enter the Russian market, where the brand is well known, Pakholkov said. Plans are to design consumer electronics products with an unnamed Russian partner. Electronics for ship instrumentation is another area of opportunity in Russia.

He expects to add 10 more engineers by the end of the year.

Belarus had plenty of engineers during Soviet times, when the country helped develop PCs and mainframes. But many have emigrated.

"We have so far been successful in finding engineers," he said. "This is the main advantage of Belarus -- the availability of skilled labor at cost much less than in Europe."

Promwad also works with the Belarus University and the Belarus Technical University to recruit graduates, he said.

Belarus still has Soviet-era laws and regulations that make it hard for an innovative company to work, Pakholkov said.

Official sentiment seems to be changing, but in the direction of software development. The government opened a high tech park with a software orientation that permits resident companies a full exemption from a wide variety of taxes.

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