With Aakash, the $35 tablet developed by his company DataWind, Suneet Singh Tuli is dreaming of bridging the digital divide. And with governments around the globe excited about his product, Tuli tells Kirtika Suneja how the unthinkable is possible

Innovation is an old habit for Suneet Singh Tuli. Not many know that the man, currently in the news for developing the world’s cheapest tablet at $35, also has to his credit the world’s widest scanner and a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records to match. But that’s old news. Right now, there’s frenzy over Aakash, the tablet Tuli?s Montreal-based company DataWind has developed for the Indian government. However, Tuli is managing it well. He manages to ignore the incessant calls on his two mobiles during the over an hour meeting we have with him, while also displaying the series of e-mails on his laptop and, of course, Aakash. Queries are pouring in and Tuli says not only India, but even governments around the world are excited about Aakash.

In fact, when we ask him what made him achieve the unthinkable and how hard it was, he surprises by answering that it was all very easy.

?In July last year, the cheapest notebook was for $80 and it was difficult to think of a device like Aakash, but July 2011 was different. We already had a seven-inch product ready in January when we saw the Indian government tender and found that the concept and specifications were similar to our product. In fact, the specifications were a little higher than ours, which surprised us. Our goal was to break the price barrier for computing and Internet access. We are proud that Aakash is an Indian product,? he says.

The only hurdle, he says, was internal. ?There was disagreement in our board about this project. Some said we won’t win the tender and others said even if we do, we’ll have to divert all our resources to this project. However, I have grown up in an environment where there was intense competition among us siblings and I was ready for any challenge.?

Modestly, he adds, ?The government has the power to scale and this project has given us that scale for what we were doing. In fact, we have made a good profit on Aakash.? DataWind has supplied one lakh units to the human resource development ministry at R1,750 per unit.

Showing his Aakash, Tuli adds that the Indian government wanted more USB ports and memory for the tablet, but the company didn’t think the students need all this. ?The initial one lakh tablets that the government has procured is a field trial. The life of the tablet is three years in which we will have to replace any faulty pieces instead of repairing them. In fact, the government has also asked for a projector to be attached with the computer.? On a sceptical note, he adds: ?Three years is a long time for the tablet…?

What about the tablet being solar powered, as the ministry had initially thought? Tuli explains patiently: ?The screen of the tablet is not made to be used in the sun and the solar panels come expensive. We have recommended to the government to increase the volumes to two-three million units for the next tender, offer both WiFi and GPRS and also give both resistive and capacitive screens.?

Although the Aakash tablet will only be available to post-secondary students, DataWind will offer a commercial version, called the UbiSlate, starting late November for R3,000. The price difference between the Aakash and UbiSlate is because the commercially available product will include a cellular modem, allowing it to deliver web access anywhere with cellular connectivity and also to function as a mobile phone.

What’s next now that he has literally touched the skies with Aakash?

A lot on his plate and no time to rest! Tuli smiles, ?We want to continue driving down hardware costs, but more than that I want to make the Internet accessible. This in the long term will have a more powerful benefit than just making cheap devices.?

But isn’t this even more unthinkable than achieving a $35 tablet, given that India has only 10 million Internet subscribers in a population of 250 million? Tuli again reminds us of his childhood and this time his father’s advice of ?do the best or don’t?. He then takes one of his mobile phones and shows how a touchscreen phone can be used by students to learn alphabets. ?My son does this on my phone and I want other kids to get educated this way.? Clearly, the incurable techie is doing his best.

Profile

Suneet Singh Tuli

Chief executive officer, DataWind

birthday:

March 18, 1968

FAMILY: Married, with four children

EDUCATION:

– Paul Kane High School, Canada

– Civil engineering graduate from University of Toronto

Career:

– 1990 to 1992: VP (project management) Case Ltd, an engineering/construction company

n 1992 to 2000: VP (sales & marketing), WideCom Ltd

n 2000 to present: President & CEO, DataWind Ltd (mobile internet access and devices)