TABLET KORMA: A $35 Android tablet, subsidized by the government of India, debuted last Wednesday. The "Aakash" (or "sky" in Hindi) tablet is made by Datawind Ltd., a Montreal-based company run by entrepreneurial brothers, Suneet and Raja Tuli. Datawind relies on a partner in Hyderabad to assemble the devices. (Here's an interview with Suneet, albeit gunked up with ads.) Datawind investors apparently include Pentium-architect Vinod Dham, Jupiter Funds, Odey Capital and Michael Schwab (son of Charles). The exact cost of the tablets is a bit fuzzy. (Adding a replacement warranty boosts the price by about $14, for instance). Current plans are to build 100,000 devices and ship them to colleges in India. Datawind says it will sell the device at $60 a pop in November to consumers. Here are a couple of competitors.
