Yes, we can!

A long time ago, (and wow has it been a long time!) I had written about how Indian IT industry must climb up the value chain. Since then I have known a few companies that have done so through high tech startups based off US but getting a lot of quality work done out of India and also of a handful of brave souls doing business in the west based out of India. The entrepreneurship spirit in India is blooming in other industries, but what about IT?

A story which has caught my attention for many months and has been kept alive during all the gadget talk at office is the much heralded and very little known Adam tablet. “Oh no, not another ipad wannabe”, you say. Well my friend, before we kill the product by calling it an ipad killer, let us give it some attention and possibly its due. This device has quite a few firsts to its name:

1. Its gonna be the first android 2.3 (gingerbread) based tablet
2. Its gonna be the first tablet to house the power frugal nvidia tegra 2 at its heart
3. Its gonna be the first tablet to have the pixel qi screen
4. Its gonna be able to play more than a day of continuous 1080p video playback
5. And most importantly, Its gonna be the first India based tablet which fights in the world scene (not counting olivepad)

The CEO of notionink, the company behind the Adam tablet, is Rohan Shravan, an IIT alumnus. Unlike his numerous predecessors and peers, he chose to NOT create jobs in US, but rather in India! He is a young chap and his confidence in his product was evident during his interview to ET Now. The start has definitely been promising but the company has pushed out the release dates in the past (not surprising) and any more details may kill a lot of the “new” stuff that Adam tablet has to offer. There is also the challenge of getting people to write some seriously nice apps for this platform, which wont be easy for a small company. Also, they need to give the look of a company that is out there to do serious business and actually beat the likes of Apple and Samsung and avoid such goofs.

All in all, very proud of what this company has achieved! And if they bring down the price by another $100 (wishful thinking never killed anyone) and ship within India for less than $50 then I will buy one. ;-)