India aims for 10$ Laptop

Nicholas Negroponte’s “One Laptop Per Child” project, which aims at providing laptops to school children in developing countries had recently escalated its price from 100$ to 175$. India rejected the deal saying that the laptop would be too pricy to be consumed by rural India, but it seems Indian Human Resources Development Ministry have a plan of their own. Indian HRD Ministry now aims to produce laptops for as cheap as 10$

Believe it or not, but the government has already come up with two prototypes, One from an engineering student at the Vellore Institute of Technology and another from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Currently, the production costs including the labor comes upto 47$, but the Indian government is ambitious about the venture and believes that the price will come down to 10$ (mere 410 Indian Rupees).

No specific details have been leaked, but most likely, it will be made on a single board and uses old recycled components. Whether this project will turn into a reality or die as a fiction, I leave that to you, but Indian Government seems to be very ambitious about this. Recently, there were talks about providing free broadband to everyone in India.

Source: News.com

This post was published by on May 5, 2007

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.techlivez.com shashank

    I can smell a big ghotala(hindi word) out of this $10 laptop
    the corrupt ministers always keeps thinking of new ways of earning money …

  • http://www.mikroproje.com zoid

    Instead of 10 usd they should release this laptops for free.

  • http://techie-buzz.com Techie Buzz

    How is it possible to make a laptop for $10, I am not sure if its ever going to be realized and is just a publicity stunt to get the world noticing

  • http://auxiom.com/2007/india-aims-for-10-laptop/ India aims for $10 laptop. / Auxiom / Steven Bao

    [...] about the $100 (now $175) laptop. India aims for a $10 laptop. Name Email (not shown) Website [...]

  • SJK

    At this stage, I’m doubtful if that’s possible. Though, it would be interesting to see the specifications and configuration of the laptop.

  • http://techmantra.net Vikram

    This is really Funny .. hahaha. :) )

  • http://www.techzilo.com TechZilo

    Hmm…$10 laptop? Its more far-fetched than a palm-sized super computer.

    But if they are using recycled parts, it would be useless from the word go!

  • http://www.avirtualexit.com Web 2.0

    This is interesting. Hope this project will succeed somehow. Thanks for brining it up to the forum.

  • http://blog.shankarganesh.com Shankar Ganesh

    $10 \o/ Laptop? I can’t imagine. Let’s see how it goes

  • http://txpress.blogspot.com Vijeesh

    As Shashank said, I too get the feeling of a ‘ghotala’. $10! And that too with the rupee gaining against the dollar ($10 should be 400 bucks now).
    You can only afford a small scientific calculator for that price!

  • http://technixupdate.com abhishek bhatnagar

    well lets see how it goes…as far as i knw this being a dream which our government not going to fullfill.

  • dev.kd

    10$ means “a future sign of complete failure”