The Hindu Business Line : HCL unveils PC for Rs 9,990

Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, and Mr Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman and CEO, HCL Infosystems Ltd, at the launch of the computer priced at Rs 9,990 in Chennai on Monday. — Shaju John

Chennai , Aug. 1

HCL Infosystems Ltd on Monday unveiled a fully functional low-cost personal computer at Rs 9,990.

Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, launched the Linux-based PC at a press meet.

The low-cost PC comes with a 1 GHz processor from Taiwan-based VIA Technologies, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hard disk, 15 inch digital colour monitor, 52X optical drive, keyboard and scroll mouse. It will support applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and Web browsing, email clients and audio-video playback.

It will also be bundled with multi-lingual fonts.

"This is only the start up model, and if someone wants additional features such as an Internet modem, they need to add those," said Mr Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman and CEO, HCL Infosystems.

The company is expanding capacity from 750,000 PCs a year at its manufacturing plants in Chennai and Pondicherry to produce around one million units a year. The company also plans to set up an additional plant, he told reporters. "We anticipate demand country-wide and are looking at other places in the country to set up facilities. Customs clearance is critical for us. The Chennai arm of Customs clears our imported components in two hours while other centres might take up to a day."

He added that about Rs 7.5 crore had been invested in expanding the Pondicherry unit. The company has also increased the number of channel partners from 800 in January this year to about 3,000 now, to meet with increased demand.

There are around 100 million Indians with monthly income of less than Rs 6,000, and the total market size of "bottom of the pyramid" was around 800 million. This low-cost PC is targeted towards this category of people. It also has provision to operate on a car battery for eight hours without power, he said.

In January 2004, the company had a market share of 3.7 per cent in the home segment, and today has a 15 per cent share — thanks to the launch of PCs at Rs 14,990 in January 2004, he said.

According to Mr Maran, usually Indian companies follow multinationals to come up with new products. However, now Indian companies are leading the way, and the low-cost PC of HCL was an example of this. The government would encourage low-cost PCs in various e-governance projects. The government plans to have six lakh Common Service Centre (CSC) across the country to provide birth and death certificates and land records. By 2007, there would be around one lakh CSCs in the country each with a PC, he said.

Low-cost PCs should accelerate the PC and Internet penetrations in the country, he said. The government's goal is to achieve 75 million PCs and 45 million Internet connections by 2010. At present, there are around 15 million PCs and 5 million Internet connections in the country.

A company official said the company expected to sell about 10,000 units a month initially.

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