Bringing computing to India's masses
Published: 05 Jul 2005 13:40 BST
One of the critical ingredients for the $100 (£57) computer is probably in your garage.
In about three months, a little-known company called Novatium plans to offer a stripped-down home computer for about $70 or $75. That is about half the price of the standard "thin clients" of this kind now sold in India, made possible in part by some novel engineering choices. Adding a monitor doubles the price to $150, but the company will offer used displays to keep the cost down.
"If you want to reach the $100 to $120 price point, you need to use old monitors," said Novatium founder and board member Rajesh Jain, a local entrepreneur who sold the IndiaWorld portal for $115m in cash in 2000 and has started a host of companies since. "Monitors have a lifetime of seven to eight years."
It is this kind of entrepreneurial thinking that has made Jain the latest visionary to seek out today's Holy Grail of home computing: a desktop that will start to bring the Internet to the more than 5 billion people around the world who aren't on it yet.
The first $100 computer is a fitting icon for a country undergoing major changes in the development of its technology, economy and society. As Indian companies increasingly break away from the limitations of handling outsourced services for Western corporations, innovations are likely to multiply and inspire the rising number of independently minded engineers and executives who are leading the country's technology industry to new frontiers.
Because of thriving exports and low PC penetration, India has become the epicentre for projects on the cutting edge of computing hardware. AMD has started to sell its Personal Internet Communicator for $235, including monitor, through a broadband partner. It says a fully equipped $100 personal computer in three years isn't out of the question.
The innovative spirit that pervades the industry is producing a variety of new approaches toward affordable computing. Tata Consultancy Services is tinkering with "domain computers" that reduce costs by just handling fixed functions such as bill payment or word processing, said Nagaraj Ijari, a senior executive in the company's operations in Bangalore.
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