NEWS: Simputer's commercial rollout pushed to July

["Frederick Noronha" <fred@bytesforall.org>]

Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 23:43:02 +0530 (IST)
From: Frederick Noronha <fred@bytesforall.org>
Subject: NEWS: Simputer's commercial rollout pushed to July 


Simputer's commercial rollout pushed to July

By Imran Qureshi, Indo-Asian News Service

Bangalore, May 22 (IANS) The commercial rollout of India's most 
promising IT product, the common man's low-cost PC called simputer, 
is now expected in the second week of July.  

The simputer was originally planned to hit the markets in August last 
 

year. Its release was rescheduled for November and then May this 
year.  

The postponement of the commercial rollout after successful field 
trials has not dampened the interest of prospective buyers, with 
requests coming 

in from North America, Africa, South America and the Far East.  

"It is taking long because it is a typical chicken and egg situation. 
 

But we have received orders for a couple of thousand units already 
and we have tied up for its manufacture abroad as well because the 
volume from abroad will explode soon," Vinay Deshpande, CEO of Encore 
Software, told IANS.  

"We had to entirely depend on internal resources to fund the pilots 
for field trials. That roughly comes to Rs.15 million. But the good 
news is that we have begun commercial production of the new version 
that is more stylish."  

Deshpande, three of his colleagues from privately held Encore and 
four scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) joined 
hands to produce the simputer in 1998.  

The scientists have set up a separate company, PicoPeta Simputers, 
whose products are being tested in Chhattisgarh for an education 
project in association with World Space Radio. PicoPeta's simputers 
are manufactured at the state-owned Bharat Electronics while Encore's 
products are produced at its sister company, Peninsula.  

"Producing 500 units for, say, 10 or 15 parties would cost Rs.10,000 
a unit. And we had already invested quite a lot in developing the 
product," says Deshpande.  

But the delay has been, to a large extent, fruitful. Encore's 
improved version is now aimed at all sections of society.  

Apart from the common man's version, it has other versions priced at 
Rs.15,000 and a high-end version that costs Rs.24,000. The low-end 
product has a black and white LCD screen and 16 MB RAM with MB flash 
while the high-end one has a colour screen with 64MB RAM and 32 MB 
Flash. The high-end version can be attached to a GSM, GPRS cell 
network, wired LAN, a micro printer or even a bar code reader.  

"The Rs.15,000 product is inclusive of all taxes. Taxes alone account 
 

for Rs.4,500. But the original target of reaching the common man is 
still achievable. If the government exempts taxes for the simputer, 
then the cost would fall to Rs.6,500 from Rs.9,000 for the low-end 
product," says Deshpande.  

Encore has received orders and enquiries from countries like Kenya, 
Mauritius, Morocco, 
Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, 
Singapore, Nepal, Canada, Mexico 
and Argentina.  

"We would have two high volume manufacturing units to meet the demand 
 

from abroad and within India. Both would be capable of scaling up 
operations," says Deshpande.  

--Indo-Asian News Service