Sakshat Tablets ready to ship to IIT Rajasthan this June

It was in the news everywhere last year. The Government of India's ambitious project to manufacture ultra low cost tablet devices for the students, the $35 Sakshat Tablets seem to be ready to see the daylights.

Ever since the tablet was announced, the low cost device has always been in debate for obvious reasons. In fact one of the tech bloggers went to an extent that it added up the cheapest components available in the market for making a tablet, just in order to prove his point that no tablet with the proposed specs can be built within that price bracket.

Well, those are the things of the past. Although, the launch date of the device has see-sawed starting this year, as government canceled the tender, then delayed the project by more than 6 months, but finally here's the good news.

The Sakshat tablets are soon going to be available for the students in India. Government has recently announced that 10,000 Sakshat tablets will be delivered to IIT Rajasthan in late June. Also, more than 90,000 units will be ready over the next four months at a price of Rs. 2,200 per device.

Reportedly, Government plans to subsidize the cost by 50%. It means that a student need to shell out just Rs. 1,100 for a single Sakshat tablet device, which seems too good to be true at this moment.

The Sakshat tablet by HCL will come with a 7 inch touchscreen, inbuilt keyboard, video conferencing facility, multimedia content, Wi-Fi, USB port, Linux OS, 32GB HD, 2 GB RAM and computing capabilities such as Open Office, SciLab and Internet browsing.

This ambitious project was the outcome of experts from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras and IIT Bombay. To be distributed by HRD ministry, the ultra low cost Sakshat tablet will mark a paradigm shift to the emerging tablet market in India.