It was in the winter of 2012 that I first met Suneet Singh Tuli, the Founder and CEO of a little known Canadian firm called DataWind. The company had shot to fame when it won a Government of India tender for low cost educational tablet, Aakash.
Tuli tells me that in 2010 when he first heard about the Indian government expressing interest to develop a low-cost tablet, mainly for educational purposes, he immediately wrote an op-ed piece in a newspaper saying it was not possible. "I was very skeptical and did not believe the idea was plausible," says.
But, by the end of January 2011, Tuli was one of the many technology provider CEOs who put ink on the tender to build the tablet for a then unheard-of $35.
Providential changes
So, how did his idea change? According to Tuli, the coming of Android as an operating system, which is an open source platform, opened the door a bit.
Also, Tuli realized that Android had a monetization engine attached to it, so one could make money on content applications and services and not just on the hardware. This allowed him to pull out a more aggressive price.
Tuli bid for the Aakash tablet at a market price of $49.98, on which he won the tender. The next lowest bid was at $65.
Earlier inventions
Tuli graduated from the University of Toronto in 1990 and is a colorful man. An engineer, in the days when there were no Internet, he noticed a problem when large blueprints/drawings needed to be cut in pieces to be sent through regular fax machines. Tuli's company DataWind came out with the large-format fax machines for engineers and architects in 1992.
At $40,000 for a pair of fax machines, Tuli found no takers for his product and came up with a brilliant marketing ploy. He approached the Guinness Book of World Records and soon held the record for the world's largest fax machine. "That gimmick created so much publicity that sales for my product did very well from then on," says Tuli. Such was the result that by 1995, three years after it started up, Tuli went public with his startup on the NASDAQ.
Today, he holds the record for the world's thinnest scanner. It's been around two decades since Tuli created the record, but there is still no Chinese competitor to the product.
Rallying on
For a DataWind, a project like Aakash had huge implications. For all the controversies around the company and Aakash (which the company called Ubislate), became a household name. For every reason why the Aakash tablet may not work, there was a very strong case why it would. "Our aim for many years has been to prove that affordable technology can impact education," says Tuli.
An RTI query shows the Aakash tablet project was official shelved in 2015, but Tuli is firm on his quest to bridge the digital divide. "In places like the UK, the unconnected are the elderly, also known as silver surfers. In India it's a very different segment and it is the masses," says Tuli.
Years later, at his dentist's, Tuli stumbled on an interesting article in a magazine. Wanting to take it home, Tuli was caught tearing the page off the magazine when the dentist walked in! He decided to come up with a battery-operated pocket scanner, which could be used as a mobile office peripheral. Naysayers were quick to point out that companies like HP will crush him.
Again, no sales happened and again Tuli took the familiar route of approaching the Guinness personnel.
Again, no sales happened and again Tuli took the familiar route of approaching the Guinness personnel.
Today, he holds the record for the world's thinnest scanner. It's been around two decades since Tuli created the record, but there is still no Chinese competitor to the product.
Rallying on
For a DataWind, a project like Aakash had huge implications. For all the controversies around the company and Aakash (which the company called Ubislate), became a household name. For every reason why the Aakash tablet may not work, there was a very strong case why it would. "Our aim for many years has been to prove that affordable technology can impact education," says Tuli.
An RTI query shows the Aakash tablet project was official shelved in 2015, but Tuli is firm on his quest to bridge the digital divide. "In places like the UK, the unconnected are the elderly, also known as silver surfers. In India it's a very different segment and it is the masses," says Tuli.
My Big Plunge feat. Datawind
The biggest problem for Tuli has been in terms of inventory and meeting demand. Industry analysis in 2011 had predicted that between 2.5-5 lakh units of tablet would be sold every year, but Aakash had propelled it to two million individual end-user pre-bookings and four million corporate/institutional/bulk orders in the year 2012. At six million orders, that was 20X analyst estimates of the Indian tablet market and 50 % of the Indian PC market. At one point Tuli needed around Rs 500 crore in inventory financing alone.
According to the unaudited financial results for nine month periods ended December 31, 2015 the Company reported revenue of 41,913 Canadian Dollar as compared to revenue of 20,718 Canadian Dollar for the same period ended December 31, 2014. The net loss for the company has also halved to about 3,702 Canadian Dollar for the nine-month period ended December 31, 2015 as compared to a net loss of 6,922 Canadian Dollar for the same period ended December 31, 2014.
The fourth quarter of FY 2016 has been particularly good for DataWind as it sold over 300,000 units in the emerging market countries. The momentum continues as it sold 34.2% of all tablets in India during the first quarter of 2016, ahead of second-place Samsung, which sold 20.9% of all tablets says a recent CMR report. IDC is its report also states DataWind rules the tablet market, followed by Samsung in second place and Lenovo in third place.
What works for Tuli is the cheap price of the tablets. At times, a dinner for two costs more than the price of the tablet. DataWind is particularly strong in the sub Rs. 5000 tablet segment where CMR says it holds a remarkable 74.4% market share. Incidentally, this is also the fastest growing segment having increased to 46% of the overall tablet market in India. It has as many as five products in the Rs. 5000 and below range.
DataWind is also riding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "Make in India." The company has rolled out half a million Internet-enabled tablets and smartphones from its production facility that was opened in July 2015 in Amritsar.
"I think the best of the Internet is yet to come and I think if you can be part of the revolution that creates access you will create lots of opportunities," says Tuli.