Tablet the $50 Aakash Tablet

¶ … Tablet

The $50 Aakash tablet was developed by the joint venture of Data Wind and the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan. Data Wind is a Canadian company run by a Sikh from Punjab named Suneet Singh Tuli (Kurup, 2011). Although the company has limited experience, it has a global mindset and this will help it when entering the Colombia market with the Aakash.

The company was founded in 2001 in Montreal, but its primary market prior to the launch of the Aakash was with a product called the Pocket Surfer. This was marketed domestically in Canada, in the United States and also in Venezuela (Gregory, 2004). This is not an extensive body of international experience, but the company's presence in the Venezuelan market prepares it for the challenges that it can expect in the Colombia market, which is similar culturally but different politically.

In addition to marketing the Pocket Surfer, Data Wind has been working on the low-cost tablet project with the Indian government for several years. This included extensive work on developing the product. Data Wind won a contract from the Ministry of Human Resource Development to work on this project that will bring many Indians into the 21st century for the first time (Timmons, 2011). The company also manufactures in China, giving it further international experience (Ibid).

What this shows is that Data Wind is an international company, being based in Canada, selling in at least four countries, producing in another and developing projects with the Indian government. This international mindset to some extent offsets the relatively small sample size of international experience for the company. As with any new company, its international experience tends to gain more value as it accumulates. An international mindset is not a substitute for experience. Complicating the issue is that much o Data Wind's international experience is of the "low-hanging fruit" variety. The owners are of Indian descent, so they were able to navigate that country's complex government networks easily. They are Canadian, so dealing in Canada and the U.S. is easy for them. Only Venezuela would have represented a challenge. Arguably, with a socialist government in place there, the degree of difficulty is higher than in Colombia. However, modest success in Venezuela is a small sample size from which to gauge the ability of the company to sell the Aakash in Colombia.

Another point to take into consideration is that the Aakash is a new product. Data Wind has not even sold it in India, or has just begun to in the past few days. While there is considerable buzz about the product in the Western media, this does not necessarily translate into a successful product, as the Tata Nano experience indicates (The Economist, 2011).

Overall, Data Wind's international experience is hard to gauge because of the small sample size. The company has operated internationally, including both marketing and government cooperation in R&D, but it has only been around for ten years and has been a small company for most of that time. The Aakash is its first attempt at marketing a tablet, so it has no international experience with this product to draw upon either. While the company has an international outlook, its lack of experience may hold it back in the Colombia market.