'Aakash II just improved IIT Rajasthan's good work'

Despite the spat between Aakash manufacturer Datawind and IIT Jodhpur (Rajasthan), the process and work carried out by IIT Rajasthan on the original low-cost tablet was important and helped achieve the government’s objective of building an affordable and useful educational device, Deepak B. Phatak head of the Aakash 2 project at IIT Bombay told Firstpost.

Standing up steadfastly for his fraternity, the the Indian Institutes of Technology, Phatak, in an interview to Firstpost said IIT Rajasthan did nothing wrong when they worked on the original Aakash and that the upgrades made in Aakash 2 “can hardly be called ‘fixing something wrong’”.

“The specs of Aakash-1 appear retarded now. (But) It must be remembered that one year old specs in the electronic consumer goods always appear stale,” Phatak said.

In a recent interview with Firstpost , Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind Ltd., which manufactures the Aakash tablets, said that there was a massive difference in the way IIT Bombay and IIT Rajasthan worked.

“IIT Bombay is more professional and focused. They are much more cued in to developing and creating applications and content – which is so critical to the project,” Tuli told Firstpost.

While Phatak agreed that IIT Bombay had improved the specifications on the Aakash 2, he refused to rubbish IIT Rajasthan’s contribution to the tablet. “The changes and improvements incorporated in Aakash 2 were only part of a natural progression,” he said.

Referring to the original Aakash, Phatak said, “At that point in time, the big global players were not willing to budge from their high price-positioning, and were not willing to participate in the global tender issued by IIT Rajasthan.” However, despite the difficulties, the process carried out by IIT Rajasthan helped define a sub $50 price tag for tablets.

“IIT Rajasthan did the initial groundwork in conducting a global tender, and succeeded in holding the price line at $49.50,” he said. “Affordable price for a useful educational device was the main objective of the Government initiative all along.”

The Aakash tablet, touted to be the world’s cheapest tablet, was mired in controversy when it first released in October 2011. Among its many problems were charges of poor manufacturing, sub-standard hardware, a stubborn resistive screen, poor battery life and a problem of overheating and under performing.

Following its release, the supply of the tablet also came to a halt as Datawind and IIT Jodhpur (Rajasthan), which was appointed by the HRD ministry to handle the awarding of contract and subsequent supplies, were at loggerheads with each other over the testing criteria of the tablet. In April this year, IIT Rajasthan blamed Datawind for the failure of Aakash, following which the two took to court.

This fracas between the two saw the project being transferred to IIT Bombay in March this year.

When the project was transferred to IIT Bombay in March this year, their mandate for the Aakash 2 was to finalise the new specs, complete the acquisition of 100,000 tablets, establish testing procedure and ensure that the project was completed successfully.

On the occasion of National Education Day on 18 November, President Pranab Mukherjee finally launched Aakash 2 in New Delhi.

“We concentrated on development of educational applications and content because these are the things which make tablets work meaningfully,” Phatak, who headed the Aakash 2 team and is also a professor at IIT Bombay’s Computer Science Engineering department, said.

Some of the big improvements in the Aakash 2 are a capacitative screen which was mandated to ensure better user experience, a faster 1GHZ processor and more memory (512 MB), a flash memory doubled from 2MB to 4 MB, an additional front-facing VGA camera for video conferences and calls, a G-sensor and Android’s latest Ice Cream Sandwich OS.