With an eye on tapping the lucrative business opportunities such growth entails, WishTel, a low cost tablet manufacturer, is focused on providing affordable devices to deliver quality educational content to students.

In an interview with tele.net.in, Milind Shah, chief executive officer, WishTel discusses the company’s recent launches and future business plans in the country. Excerpts…

How big is the low cost tablet market in India?

Given that the tablet business is still an evolving and emerging segment, it is difficult to share the market size for the same. Also, unlike the mobile handset market, there are no benchmarks in the tablet market. Since the mobile handset is an established category, one can easily compare and analyse sales figures and the other related parameters year-on-year.

However, in India, the low cost tablet market can be divided into two segments; one dominated by Indian manufacturers and the other dominated by imported devices.

What opportunities does the company see in the low-cost tablet market?

As per our assessment, there is an annual demand for nearly 2, 00, 000 low cost tablets in India. However, the lack of availability of data related to the tablet segment makes it difficult to identify the market for such devices.

What products has the company recently launched in India?

We are focused on providing affordable but feature rich products to our target audience. Our latest launch has been the IRA Icon tablet PC. It has been launched in partnership with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). The device supporting 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity is targeted at technology savvy youngsters, young professionals and homemakers. As part of BSNL Live, users will be provided services like video streaming, Mobile TV and other applications.

IRA Icon comes preloaded with applications like Wish Learning, Wish Studio, Wish TV, Wish News and Wish video calling.

In August 2012, WishTel partnered with Shemaroo Entertainment to release a film based on Chanakya’s teachings, “Chanakya Speaks-The Seven Pillars for Business Success.” The film targeting business professionals, corporate decision makers, entrepreneurs, management students and trainees will be made available to IRA Icon tablet users.

How is WishTel placed vis-a-vis competition?

There are a number of players in the segment and this space is witnessing several device launches.

However, over the years, WishTel has worked towards developing in-depth expertise in creating real time embedded systems and development tools. We are committed to building an ecosystem of highly integrated hardware and software for tablet PCs and multimedia boxes in the country.

What are the company’s business plans in the country?

Currently, there is a lack of quality education material available for young students in the country. We are focusing on developing an efficient platform to provide students access to quality education through a proprietary content delivery network.

Towards this end, we have implemented a pilot project on digital education in Maharashtra aimed at highlighting how the use of tablets in the school actually works at the ground level.

We are also concentrating on providing relevant content to users in their regional language.

Our previous launches, the IRA and the IRA Thing 2 supported content in as many as 23 Indian languages. Going forward, we wish to bridge the technological gap in the education industry. Through our initiative titled, Wish Education we are focusing on providing relevant study material for students on the tablets.