Asia Bizz: India’s HRD minister Kapil Sibal announced on February 6, 2012 that the low cost Aakash tablet PC will be made indigenously and its production base diversified. At a function, Sibal said that the government is going to diversify production base of the Aakash tablet.
The HRD minister also assured that they are planning to create an eco-system for the end to end development of Aakash in the country. Sibal added that this is expected to create enormous opportunities for the R&D institutions, electronic production houses and developers.
At present, the IITs and the ITIs are onboard on the development of the device. The Aakash tablet has so far reached a few of the students. Earlier the HRD ministry said that the Indian government will be requiring 22 crores of the devices and for this reason, fresh tenders will be issued so as to give opportunities to the other companies other than Datawind.
The device is currently available for Rs 1,500 after government subsidy. When asked if the next tender will have the ‘Made in India’ clause in it, Sibal said that the Indian government has to first make sure that it s 100 percent done locally. Right now many of the components including the processor are procured from outside Inda.
