Cheapest Tablet Aakash by a Gursikh

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It is with a sense of pride we ready today's news about a product being launched by Datawind, a company headed by Our Gurmukh Pyaarey Veerjee, Sardar Suneet Singh Tuli


India launches Aakash tablet computer priced at $35
Millions of students will have access to the tablets, officials hope Continue reading the main story
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India has launched what it says is the world's cheapest touch-screen tablet computer, priced at just $35 (£23).

Costing a fraction of Apple's iPad, the subsidised Aakash is aimed at students.

It supports web browsing and video conferencing, has a three-hour battery life and two USB ports, but questions remain over how it will perform.

Officials hope the computer will give digital access to students in small towns and villages across India, which lags behind its rivals in connectivity.

At the launch in the Indian capital, Delhi, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal handed out 500 Aakash (meaning sky) tablets to students who will test them.

He said the government planned to buy 100,000 of the tablets. It hopes to distribute 10 million of the devices to students over the next few years.

"The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide," Mr Sibal said.

Continue reading the main story
“
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The thing with cheap tablets is most of them turn out to be unusable”
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Rajat Agrawal

BGR India
The Aakash has been developed by UK-based company DataWind and Indian Institute of Technology (Rajasthan).

It is due to be assembled in India, at DataWind's new production centre in the southern city of Hyderabad.

"Our goal was to break the price barrier for computing and internet access," DataWind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli said.

"We've created a product that will finally bring affordable computing and internet access to the masses."

The company says it will also offer a commercial version of the tablet, called UbiSlate. It is expected to hit the shelves later this year, retailing for about $60.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15180831

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Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of tablet makers Datawind, speaks exclusively to NDTV about the making of the Aakash and how they managed to keep the manufacturing price so low in india.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWAVTLhg ... r_embedded

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$10 tablet possible, says maker of Aakash
Aditi Tandon/TNS

New Delhi, October 9
“At first, even I didn’t think it was possible,” quipped Suneet Singh Tuli, maker of the world’s cheapest net access and computing device priced at just $45. But he is talking of the old times when the idea of a cheap computer was still laughable for a world brought up on the staple diet of hi-tech devices that serve more as symbols than anything else.

Today, everything is possible. “If India can usher in a mobile revolution, why not an Internet revolution? A rickshaw puller, who has a cell phone today, can have a computer tomorrow. Our client is not the man who can afford the iPhone. Our client is the man on the street who still reveres the computer.

“We want to end that reverence by making the device as simple as a toy - that common, that easy,” said the Ludhiana-born, 43-year-old Sikh entrepreneur, who, along with his brother Raja Tuli, gave body to India’s vision of producing cheap laptops as educational tools for the poorest of students.

The government was looking for $35 bid, but $49.98 was the closest it got, with Tuli bagging the contract. “I still remember that day. I was in the lounge of IIT Rajasthan at Jodhpur waiting for the results when the other lowest bidders started teasing me. They asked me if I had done the calculations right. I was so anxious that I called my brother back home in North Alberta to check. Luckily, all went well,” recounted Suneet, whose family migrated from Ludhiana to Iran in 1976.

Few would know that their first business venture was “Witefax”, the world’s biggest fax machine which the Guinness recorded as such in 1992. Ask Suneet of its history and he says, “Necessity is the mother of invention. In 1989, the fax machine had just appeared, but it could not do our engineering documents. So we invested in a project to develop our kind of machine which turned out to be the biggest world over.”

But even with a history of invention and 18 US patents on a technology that enhances the speed of downloading on Internet, the Tulis were not sure about “Aakash”. Providence, however, ensured that they bid for it.

Asked if Kapil Sibal’s dream of $10 tablet is possible, Suneet explained, “When I got my first Macintosh, it cost $5000. Today for $45, I can take home an “Aakash”. Tomorrow, it could cost me $10.”

Ask him if “Aakash” can be called an Indian product considering it has imported parts and he quips, “A product made by Indians, in India, and one that generates revenue and employment in India is essentially Indian.”

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It brings us feelings of inherent MaaNN that our Gurmukh veerjee is all over the news throughout the world and it should serve as a role model call for all gursikhs around the world.

A Dad feels very happy when his child brings awards home and if a child is an obedient child at home also, imagine the happiness of dad......Now imagine happiness of Dhan Guru Gobind Singh Saaheb Jee whose Amritdhaaree Child has earned this honor, and not only this Amritdhaaree child has brought honor but also his gurmukh family does humble sewaa in Weekly Simran Session every Tuesday at Dixie Gurudwara in Toronto.

Shabash Gursikho !