By Bruce C. Smith

Far from the multimillion-dollar research labs of giant technology corporations, inventor Shakoor Siddeeq has a workbench in the garage of his Fishers townhome, where he hopes to make a new computer keyboard.

Tech industry insiders say there are others like him in Indiana, trying to become rich with new tech devices and software. They are inventors and would-be entrepreneurs working in their basements, garages and on dining room tables to design prototypes, test materials or write computer software.

Finding money to build and sell a new product can be just as difficult as the years spent inventing. So Siddeeq is looking at crowd funding to launch the newly designed keyboard he calls FlexScroll.

"After the storm, you hope there is a rainbow and a pot of gold," he said, smiling.

Indiana has a long history of upstart companies becoming big corporations, said Kristian Andersen, an angel investor, co-founder of several startups and strategic design consultant to others. "In just the last few years, we've seen $4 to $5 billion in wealth creation and thousands of jobs from companies that were once startups" in Central Indiana, he said.

He also works with Indymade.com, which is tracking 211 startup and growth companies in the metro area, most of them computer and technology based. Some are spinoffs of early tech successes.

Others like Siddeeq's company, Judoka Mobile, "seem to grow up from the soil here," Andersen said.

"For a city this size, there is a remarkable amount of activity and success. It is a regular stop for (venture capital investors) because there is something special and outsized happening here," he said.

And there are fewer hurdles for inventors like Siddeeq to cash in on their ideas, Andersen said.

"The internet makes it easier to access customers, so for example, you wouldn't necessarily need a big distributor to sell your thin, wireless keyboards. You can have them made in China and buy ads on Facebook that target thousands of tech-savvy owners of smartphones and tablets," he said.

Hundreds of millions of mobile devices are sold each year, so Siddeeq sees a huge market for his new keyboard with "college students and other people who want to be mobile and need a better way to input data."

Finishing a design and selling a product still takes money. Unless an angel investor or a large manufacturer funds the project, Siddeeq is ready to turn to the online crowd funding website Indiegogo.com with a goal of raising $275,000. Judoka has a page which, so far, has garnered just $79 in pledges.

"I've not been pushing that much for a few weeks, until I make a couple final changes in the prototype and have a new video that demonstrates a working model," he said. The Judoka website has a video of a static prototype.

He has had some interest in investment or a buyout from hardware manufacturers, who could use his patented key switch in other devices, too. But first they want to see a working prototype of FlexScroll, which Siddeeq hopes to have ready soon.

The 40-year-old, with an electrical engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, has had other patents for keyboard and wearable tech ideas back to the 1990s, but they didn't have the promise of his latest project.

So, back to the garage workbench. Siddeeq and his wife, Debalina Chakrabarty, are the parents of nine children, ages 18 months to 20 years. This means his work space to fabricate computer pieces in the garage competes with the bikes, children's books and the storage of family possessions.

"It is fairly simple, really," he said, picking up a loosely assembled prototype for a new wireless keyboard to be used with Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The FlexScroll is so thin and flexible that it can be rolled up and stowed in a metal tube the size of a large cigar, about an inch in diameter by 6 inches long.

The key to the keyboard is his redesign of the letter keys, so that typing on the thin, flexible KeyScroll feels like typing on a typical laptop computer. "This is full-sized keys with the tactile feeling of a laptop," Siddeeq said.

He hopes that cellphone and tablet users, tired of eye strain and cramped fingers from pecking on tiny screens, will pay $100 or more for a mobile keyboard that rolls out easily and feels full-sized.

Siddeeq formed Judoka Mobile in 1999 and has a U.S. patent on the key switch design.

He uses a sheet of strong polycarbonate film as a backing to replace the thicker materials typically used in standard keyboards. The tiny pieces of metal usually found under each key to give them a spring-like bounce are replaced with an elastic material. He still uses a rubbery "dome" under each key, like the full-sized keyboards, to give keystrokes their bounce.

The assembly is about 1.5 millimeters thick, about half or one-third the thickness of most rigid keyboards. "I think I can get it thinner, less than a millimeter," he said.

"There are keyboards on the market that are flexible enough to be folded, but none I have found that can be rolled up inside a small tube and that give the tactile feeling of a laptop," Siddeeq said. "If the keyboard can take up less room in (any) device, that leaves more room for other things, like bigger batteries."

Local tech experts see the potential.

"You can get flexible keyboards, though they don't roll up that small and they are not horribly popular if they don't have the feel of a full keyboard," said Joel Read, owner of MacExperience, a hardware and software sales and service and IT consulting company in Indianapolis. "You can get thin boards for iPads, for example, but they do not feel like a keyboard, so they are not as popular. If he's solved that, it's a big step."

About Judoka Mobile

Company: Fishers-based Judoka Mobile, LLC, a technology startup that designs and develops ultrathin and compact mobile peripheral accessories and components.

Who: Shakoor Siddeeq, founder and chief executive officer.

Product: FlexScroll provides the feel of typing on a full-size wireless keyboard, but is flexible enough to be rolled into a small tube.

Website:www.JudokaMobile.com

IndyStar.com: Watch a video of Shakoor Siddeeq at work.