India's $35 tablet headed nowhere?

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 18 February 2011, 23:02 IST   |    7 Comments
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India's $35 tablet headed nowhere?
New Delhi: Instead of turning true, the $35 tablet got delayed and now, with the turn of events even its chance of existence is a question. Till date everyone knew it was HCL who would assist the government, but now, the company even denies to be ever associated with the project. HCL Infosystems has denied its association with Sakshat project of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to manufacture the access and computing device, which is to be priced $35 a piece. "It has been wrongly reported that we are associated with the project," Ajay Chowdhry, a co-founder of HCL and Chairman, HCL Infosystems said. Chowdhry mentioned that HRD ministry has recently floated a Request For Proposal (RFP) for the project and some companies have participated in it. When asked about HCL's participation in the RFP, Chowdhry told that his company will not participate in the RFP. "We will not apply for RFP," Chowdhry said. He did not comment on the reasons for not participating in the RFP for Sakshat. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development has unveiled an access-cum-computing device designed by experts at Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Sciences and named the product 'Sakshat'. The ministry is licensing the same to companies desirous of manufacturing the system. The product has been widely termed as $35 tablet. There were reports which claimed that HCL has launched 'Sakshat' that Chowdhry denied. Indian government has disappointed people in the past also with their false promises. Earlier in the beginning of 2009, Indian Government unveiled a $10 educational laptop which turned out to be a substandard flop receiving various negative views. Now it is $35 tablet's turn. There are a lot of speculations happening around the project. Earlier there were accusations regarding the product that it was not an Indian product and it is completely outsourced from China. The big question that arises at this moment is why HCL didn't react about the news earlier? HCL's name was always associated with 'Sakshat' ($35 tablet). It was also reported that they denied security deposit of $60 crore at that moment but it never denied having an association with it.

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