India’s showpiece Aakash tablet Chinese made?

[AADHAAR]

why change its name if it was chinese made?? Akash SAM Syndrome!!

No problem writing "assembled in china" on it, which should be there already I think .. just like what Apple already does.

In that sense, Intel should write on some of it's chips "designed in India".

 

[Ankit_Pujari]

Aakash 2 Made in China? Datawind’s Response

In response to Hindustan Times’ lead story today:

Conned: Is the Aakash 2 Made in China?

I asked Datawind’s Suneet Singh Tuli to respond. He did so immediately, a response he has also shared with Hindustan Times. I am reproducing this without comment at this point. More later.

“This sensationalist article is inaccurate and misleading. We deny the allegations made therein from unnamed ‘sources’.

Datawind is a design house that develops products and software. In the past we have developed a pocket internet device (PocketSurfer) and netbooks such as our award winning seven inch and nine inch models which were sold worldwide. For these we developed all the printed circuit boards including the CPU motherboard and developed the software that runs on these CPU’s including our revolutionary compression technology that compresses data by an order of magnitude over anybody else so that it can run on the current networks in India.

Our key technological advantage is that we provide high speed internet access over the networks that are prevalent in rural India and our dream and goal is to provide the common man in India with low cost Internet. Our business model is similar to that of Apple where we use subcontract manufacturers to build our products. So, these are built in facilities of our contractors.

Anybody wishing to verify our technical competency can do this simply by checking the many dozens of patents we’ve received, on the U.S. government’s Patent & Trademark Office: tinyurl.com/d6o5283

We launched our low cost tablets in India a year ago which was and still is the lowest cost tablet in the world. These were built in India including all the circuit-boards in Hyderabad. This was based on a 360 Mhz Arm CPU. The next generation to that had an 800MHz Arm Cortex A8 CPU and all the boards were made in Hyderabad also.

The primary difference between Aakash I and 2 is the Capacitive Touch Screen. This is the most expensive and important element and this product is manufactured in our Montreal facility (Videos are uploaded on Youtube: youtu.be/8A39Yasa5fo and youtu.be/-vi6_94Mm8M) which has been visited by representatives of IIT. This is one of the primary reasons why our devices are lower cost than others, as we use a proprietary technology. The Aakash2 uses the Allwinner A13 chip, which has become the standard among low cost tablets. The software and mechanical parts are developed by us and the motherboards utilize our approved designs based on A13 reference. The media are welcome to visit our Montreal facility where this is done and we are happy to disclose our designs on a confidential basis.

For the first 10k units for IIT, and for expediency sake we had the motherboards and kits manufactured in our Chinese subcontractor’s facilities, and then the units have been ‘kitted’ in China at various manufacturers for expediency, whereas the final assembly and programming has happened in India. This was well discussed and we got approval prior to shipping. The initial devices were assembled and programmed at our facilities in New Delhi and Amritsar. We finished this batch of 10k units and delivered them to IIT and will be starting another batch of 20k units for them in two weeks. The media are welcome to visit when we do this batch. We also have four partner manufacturers across India that will work on the deliveries to the government but we just couldn’t get them started to assemble our new Aakash 2 units in time but they will start to ship early in December.

Further to this, we’re setting up our second touch screen facility in India, which is going through pilot right now. The full clean room facility will be up and running in another month. We will be producing a press release at that time with tours.

We have been strong proponents of developing a manufacturing base in India, and our actions continue to reflect this. It looks like these allegations are a desperate attempt by somebody to sabotage the image of India, and we would urge you not to fall prey to such attempts. Yours truly, Suneet Singh Tuli”

pkr.in/general/aakash-2-response

 

[minki]

ok india is nowhere close to china. china has gone very ahead of india. sorry to think we can compete.

They are Indian-born Canadian citizens.



Yeah, but they don't lie about where it was made, and then boast about it.

That's the difference here.

there is nothing to boast about where its made

 

[idune]

this got to be the funniest.... indians branding Chinese tablet as indian and boasting goes all the the way to indian govt. Sheesh.

 

[RazPaK]

LoL, major Indian facepalm.

 

[sms]

Guys it's all business and there is no need to add pride to it. A Canadian company was selected to deliver the product where they produce or buy is irrelevant.

Datawind is a big time failure! Too many glitches in their design forced them to stop manufacturing of units at selected manufacturing partners (read India and out side India).

Now think what option they have left when Congress party is pounded by allegation of corruption and failure to meet it's promises. So Congress pulled few strings on Datawind to make some deliveries to make Cong. look good. To show the world that they deliver what they promise.

On other side Datawind is measurably late on deliveries and only chance of their survival and revive their reputation (didn't had any) is by delivering something.

They did by buying off the selves and delivering at loss and hoping that they will breakeven on subsidy from Govt.

 

[SHAMK9]

fail woot:

 

[xuxu1457]

nothing surprise, 86% laptop made in China, most IT parts of the world made in China, it's hard to make an IT product avoiding China, you place an order to factory then get your product labeling on your own brand. all the world's companies did these, ADIDAS,NIKE,APPLE,ACE,HP,DELL,Toshiba,Lenovo..........

 

[idune]

Guys it's all business

So indian way of business is take product from some where wlse like China and brant it as indian? That is hell of an way to cheat people and do business. People should just buy from original source rather than doing business with indian cheating business practice.

 

[sms]

So indian way of business is take product from some where wlse like China and brant it as indian? That is hell of an way to cheat people and do business. People should just buy from original source rather than doing business with indian cheating business practice.

Technically they are not doing any thing wrong by labeling assembled/ produced in India as they are not buy a complete product but kits. They do final assembly and do customization in India.

This practice is very common in today's industries and it's called smart business plan not cheating.

Lot of companies doing it. e.g. some mobile companies make kits in China and do assembly in Latin American companies and label as assembled in "xxx".

Going back to basic, if they (Canadian company) are not able to produce a product meeting required spec and cost what is wrong in asking some one to do it for them?

 

[kam83]

this got to be the funniest.... indians branding Chinese tablet as indian and boasting goes all the the way to indian govt. Sheesh.

What more funny is..................... your country not being able to develop even a circuit board .... Now get back to your garment factory..and finish my underwear order

 

[rcrmj]

They are making money? How?



They bought them from China at $42 per unit, and sold them to the Indian Government for $42 per unit.

Zero profit.

And how will they pay for their overhead costs, employee salaries, fixed costs, variable costs, etc? If they bought it for $42 and sold it for $42 then how will they pay for their other costs during this process?

face project as they always do to suit their clueless ego

 

[sms]

They are making money? How?

They bought them from China at $42 per unit, and sold them to the Indian Government for $42 per unit.

Zero profit.

And how will they pay for their overhead costs, employee salaries, fixed costs, variable costs, etc? If they bought it for $42 and sold it for $42 then how will they pay for their other costs during this process?

face project as they always do to suit their clueless ego

This is Datawind problem. They should have evaluated their capabilities to deliver the product they bid and won.

In fact they have failed measurably and may face some penalties if they do not fulfill their contractual obligations to deliver right product, at right time (actually they are late) and at contractual price. Their actions are focused on throwing some units to buy some time to fix their issues (hopefully) and keep Congress happy and provide some thing to showcase/ portray as UPS success story.

Actually there is nothing for Indian to gloat about as a company (foreign) got contract. It could have be Chinese company or a company from any other nation.

 

[Hellraiser007]

this got to be the funniest.... indians branding Chinese tablet as indian and boasting goes all the the way to indian govt. Sheesh.

Just like Apple did, Get the components from other manufacturers and assemble your product. Aakash tablet and Apple Ipad are similar business model.

India is at the infant stage in electronic hard ware field and soon will catch up.

These days Chinese cheerleaders jump up and down with out any reason.

 

[IndoCarib]

India low-cost tablet not a product of China | ZDNet

In response to allegations India's low-cost Aakash tablets were bought off-the-shelf in China, the company behind the device has explained certain parts were manufactured in the Chinese market primarily to speed up the production process, but the software development and assembling of the tablet components were done in India.

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of U.K.-based company Datawind, in a statement said the motherboards and kits used in the the first 10,000 units for Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) were manufactured in its Chinese subcontractor's facilities "for expediency sake", whereas the final assembly and programming were done in India, AFP reported Saturday. Tuli added this step was "well discussed" and approval was given by IIT-Bombay prior to shipping.