With more than 100 million citizens online, it's home to more Internet users than nearly every other country. Yet when it comes to Internet penetration - the percentage of the population with access - India is near the bottom of the global rankings.
It's one of those curious and seemingly contradictory statistics that illustrates both the developmental challenges facing countries such as India, and the massive growth opportunities for investors in emerging markets.
Canadian entrepreneurs Suneet and Raja Singh Tuli are staking the future of their company, Datawind, on the potential of emerging markets. Datawind recently won an Indian government con-tract to produce low-cost tablets for the Indian market.
The initial contract was for 100,000 tablets, but Datawind's executives believe orders for the product could in-crease to 10 million units if not more.
But, Datawind was not initially focused on the developing world. In fact, before younger brother Suneet saw an ad for the tender in an Indian news-paper, Datawind had its sights set firmly on Western markets.
"[Our] focus was to get the product ready for the U.S. and U.K. . and figure out how we were going to launch in those markets," says Mr. Singh. "In-stead of focusing on [a few countries] and trying to do half a million units, what if I focused on one country that had a potential to do hundreds of millions of units?"
After scrambling to assemble a proposal and a prototype in time, Datawind beat out four other manufacturers and secured the contract.
Including the government subsidy, Datawind's Internet-enabled tablet, the Aakash ("sky" in Hindi), will be sold for $35, approximately the same price as a mobile phone without Inter-net access.
"Six billion people in the world today use mobile phones, but only two billion of those people have access to the Inter-net," says Mr. Singh, "An affordable Internet-enabled tablet could bridge that gap and bring billions of new Internet users online."
If things go as Mr. Singh hopes, Datawind could emerge as a leader in the race to tap the vast economic potential of the Indian sub-continent.
But not everyone is convinced that the low-cost tablet will succeed. Mark Warschauer, an education and technology professor at the University of California, Irvine, is one such skeptic.
"The Aakash has gotten lots of publicity, but there are a lot of sub-$100 tablets coming out of China," says Mr. Warschauer. "And from the reviews I've read, they're pretty junkie. They're slow, and battery life is low, the interface is so clunky, and the software doesn't load right."
He points out that users might find the devices more frustrating than they are worth. Indeed, recent reports indicate these same concerns could also plague the Aakash.
Meanwhile, the Singh brothers are moving full-steam ahead. Four new manufacturing facilities in India are in development, and Datawind is negotiating deals with the governments of Thai-land, Turkey and others that will be announced in the coming months.
"I strongly believe that the flood gates for the next billion Internet users have opened," says Mr. Singh, "They'll come on board because the price barriers have been broken."
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