Indian company to design low cost Indian tablet PC for poverty survey

After Sakshat launched a $35 tablet, Bharat Electronics has announced it too will launch a low-cost Android device

Published on Aug 5, 2011

Following Sakshat's ultra cheap $35 tablet appeared, another Indian manufacturer has announed a budget tablet PC

The tablet will be manufactured by Bharat Electronics Ltd, one of the most well known state owned companies, that mostly caters for the defence market.

not much is known about the tablet, but it will run on Android 2.2 Froyo.

The cost of the tablet is just Rs. 3000, which makes it pretty cost-effective. But the sad part is that this tablet in not designed for the common masses. The purpose to launch this tablet is to aid the Ministry of Rural Development in poverty survey.

Around 2000 tablets have been distributed to the concerned offices, which would take action in the Northern-Eastern parts of India. “Although, this is not the prime device of the Defence electronics behemoth, however, over six lacks pieces will be delivered by the end of November this year,” said BEL’s CMD, Ashwani Kumar Datt.

This tablets runs on solar energy, so it is a great device to use in the rural areas. It has a feature to store data to a central server in real time. “The company is looking forward to do  some business as well out of this device. It was a big challenge to design it in just 4.5 months at such a low price. But the machine is really good to compete with anything in the market, added Datta.

Besides, Ministry of Human Resource Development ministry is also planning to provide this device to the Indian students at affordable prices.