NEWS: India to mass produce common man's computer

India to mass produce common man's computer

By Imran Qureshi, Indo-Asian News Service

Bangalore, Oct 30 (IANS) Simputer, a simple, inexpensive computer developed
by Indian scientists, will go into mass production here from next month to
popularize its use.

PicoPeta Simputers, owned by four innovative scientists and backed by the
Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and the public sector Bharat
Electronics Limited (BEL) have announced an alliance to produce 50,000
Simputers in the first year of manufacture.

"Our production target for the first year is 50,000," said Nagarjun K.,
manager of product development, PicoPeta Simputers.

The Simputer -- short for Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual Computer -- is a
small, desktop computing device.

"We will be producing 1,000 Simputers in November at a price of Rs.13,000
(about $260) each, inclusive of taxes and duties, and they will be
immediately available in the market."

"We have won two multinationals (one India-based and another
non-India-based) and a few NGOs, but we cannot announce their names now,"
Nagarjun told IANS.

The devices will be marketed as BEL-PicoPeta Simputers through the public
sector giant's distribution network. And they will cover a spectrum of
applications and price points.

BEL, at a state-of-the-art facility in the Bangalore Complex, has
manufactured at least 400 Simputers for PicoPeta in the pilot production
phase and, already deployed some for an education project in the tribal
areas of Chattisgarh.

The BEL-PicoPeta Simputers are a radical improvement over the earlier
Simputer prototypes on several fronts. "Our aim is to reduce the price to
Rs.10,000, once large scale production begins," Nagarjun added.

The first product will have a notepad, spread sheet, "scientific"
calculator, address book, image viewer, MP3player, games, quiz, tools for
text to speech, smart card, and Malacca, an interface to make it more
customer friendly.

But different varieties of BEL-PicoPeta Simputers will be produced. The
high-end variety with key hand picked innovations along with the ability to
support a wired and wireless options will be available by February 2003.

"It is an important step to utilise the opportunities in the huge IT
hardware, domestic and global markets, with BEL-PicoPeta Simputers, a 100
percent
Indian innovation designed and manufactured to world class standards," V.K.
Koshy, chairman and managing director, BEL, said in a statement.

"The goal of the Simputer project was to design, develop and manufacture in
India world class devices to meet the developing world's unique
requirement," said Swami Manohar, CEO of PicoPeta.

The Simputer was designed and developed by four scientists from IISc --
Vijay Chandru, Vinay, K. Hariharan and Manohar, and three from the private
IT company, Encore software, headed by Vinay Deshpande.

Their decision was an offshoot of a discussion at BangaloreIT.com 1998 on
bridging the digital divide.

--Indo-Asian News Service