The first, locally made, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled educational tablet was unveiled by the EPIC Foundation on Tuesday.
The tablets, which were created by VVDN Technologies in association with MediaTek India and CoRover.ai, have special characteristics that allow them to be repaired and upgraded, addressing the urgent issues of the digital divide and the build-up of electronic waste in India.
“We are proud to introduce an education tablet that is designed and inspired by India, which will be beneficial to a large number of students.” At the tablet’s debut, S Krishnan, Secretary of MeitY, stated that it will encourage young people to adopt the philosophy of designing and producing things in India, for India, and for the globe.
Dr. Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman of the EPIC Foundation, continued, “We want to build products in such a way that the components are easily replaceable and upgradable, aligned with our overarching goal of elevating Indian electronics to real Atmanirbharta.”
Two important facets of education and social empowerment will be addressed by the new product: it will increase demand for “Indian, repairable, sustainable” electronics products and brands in high impact/high volume categories; it will also remove logistical and financial barriers that keep schools from obtaining high impact, repairable devices and extend the product’s lifespan.
“In addition to being urgent issues of the modern day, obsolescence schemes, the creation of subpar items, and repair costs that are higher than the cost of buying a new device all contribute to the growing issue of electronic waste. Repair engineers would be able to find plenty of work throughout India thanks to our repairable product, Chowdhry said.
The education tablet, which aims to actively facilitate digital learning, is the first of its kind to be integrated with the BharatGPT virtual assistant. It will also showcase AI/ML based multilingual translation for Indian languages (Voice-2-Voice, Text-2-Text, etc.) to support the country’s linguistic diversity and the inclusion of its citizens with disabilities.
“In the electronics sector, we have large targets to increase the country’s overall exports, which is undoubtedly important — but as exports increase, so do imports because the country’s value addition is still relatively small, with a large portion being imported, assembled, and then re-exported or used for domestic consumption,” Krishnan explained.
He stated that “raising the share of Indian production of electronic components is necessary and is contingent upon increasing value addition in the electronics sector.”
“These are MeitY’s next objectives, building on the success of the Government of India’s most successful PLI program to date—the large-scale electronics PLI,” stated Krishnan.
