Indian engineers launch $200 'Simputer' 26 April 2001, Reuters

BANGALORE: A non-profit trust founded by engineers of a science institute and an Indian firm on Wednesday launched a $200 computing device, called the "Simputer", in an effort to bust the digital divide.

Clad in jeans and T-shirts that said "Radical simplicity for universal access," the scientists showed the Simputer in easy-to-use applications aimed at rural folk, including voicemail, text-to-speech capabilities and Internet access. They showed how illiterate farmers can get to know the ruling prices of vegetables by using symbols and speech software.

The Simputer Trust has built the device, named as a short form for Simple, Inexpensive and Multilingual, with a planned street price in India of Rs. 9,000 (nearly $200).

"The Simputer is essentially an empowering device," Vijay Chandru, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science and one of the trustees, told a packed auditorium in the state-run institute's lush-green Bangalore campus. The trust also has members from Encore Software Ltd, a Bangalore firm which spearheaded the project and plans to be one of the first three licensed makers of the device.

The engineers thanked the Free Software Foundation, a body which believes that intellectual property must be shared without pricing. The foundation believes that copyrighting must give way to "copy-lefting" to aid large masses of people.

Though priced and designed for mass use, the Simputer resembles popular palmtop computers in looks. It has features that respond to a mouse-like stylus, is enabled for a smart card which can carry personal information and has been built using Linux, the free software platform shared and improved on by a worldwide community of technology buffs.

"We reduced the cost a lot by using public domain software," Vinay Deshpande, Encore's chief executive, who is also the president of India's Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), told Reuters.

The Simputer Trust will license the device's design and software to manufacturers for mass production but keep a tight control on specifications to maintain standards. The device makers can modify the design but must pool back the changes to the trust after having a one-year headstart in commercially using the modifications.

A one-time licence fee will cost $25,000 for firms in developing countries and $250,000 for those in developed countries, trust officials said. Funds from licensing will be ploughed back into research and development. Deshpande said violation of licensing conditions could lead to legal prosecution. "Having said that, it is an experiment," he added.

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The GOD Box
15 April 2001, Red Herring magazine, By Om Malik

Inara Networks hopes its device will bring the world closer to an all-optical networks - and solidify its founder’s reputation.

‘I THINK THIS IS MY LAST optical systems company,” says Raj Singh of his two-year-old startup, Inara Networks. The entrepreneur has made more money than anyone else in the field of optics - he sold Cerent, Siara Systems, and Stratum-One Communications for a combined $13 billion - and is betting that Inara’s optical networking devices will be the key to enabling today’s legacy communications systems to work with optical networks.

SINGH-ALONG
Inara began life in November 1999 as Roshnee, amid much fanfare. While Mr. Singh is virtually unknown outside of telecommunications circles, the 55-year old entrepreneur and venture capitalist has movie star visibility within them. His startups Fiberlane Communications (which became Cerent and Siara Networks) and StratumOne have returned millions of dollars in profits for his investors. In many ways, if Vinod Khosla, general partner at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is the godfather of optical networking, then Mr. Singh is the family consiglere.

If he’s right, the so-called God Box that Inara plans to have on the market by early next year will be snapped up by phone companies, which will use them to extend their heavy investments in legacy synchronous optical networks (SONents) while pumping up their bandwidth.

Disparate gear from Tellium, Nortel Networks, and ONI Systems combined with software from Sycamore Networks would be needed to replicate Inara’s box. “No single provider can really make it happen right now,” says L. David Passmore, an analyst with the Burton Group, a market research firm in Sterling, Virginia. Mr. Passmore is skeptical that Inara - or any company - can arrive at such a comprehensive solution.

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Roll-Your-Own Internet 23 April 2001, Business Week (Small BIZ – UNDER THIRTY – Special Issue)   You could almost call Atlantic.Net the anti-dot-com. It turned a profit almost immediately, was completely self-financed for its first five years, and last year brought in revenues of more than $10 million.

With its own network, little debt, and 50,000 subscribers, it's well-insulated from the problems plaguing other Internet service providers. But co-founders Manoj "Marty" Puranik, 27, and Jose Sanchez, 26, didn't start their Gainesville (Fla.) ISP to be an overnight success. Back in 1994, the duo simply wanted to get online themselves, but the University of Florida didn't allow all students Web access.

A computer repair shop run out of Puranik's dorm room paid for their first Net hookup. Within a year, they had eight employees and 2,000 customers in the Gainesville area. Atlantic.Net focused on overlooked second-tier markets, while venture-financed competitors "did irrational things, like spending $600 to get a $20-a-month customer," says Puranik.

Now the company is ramping up in big cities and selling business services. It seems like a good way to stay online.

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India plans second rocket launch next year 24 April 2001, CNN, Reuters and Press Trust of India BANGALORE - India's space agency said on Tuesday a milestone rocket launched this month to put a heavy satellite deep in space was a total success and a second test to launch a heavier satellite was planned next year.

India joined a small club of nations capable of launching heavy satellites on April 18 with the flight of its Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), which placed a 1,540-kg (3,000-lb) satellite deep into space.

India joined the United States, Japan, China, Russia and the European Space Agency among those who can launch heavy geostationary satellites, the kind used in advanced communications. The launch could also give the nuclear-capable country the ability to test a wide range of military technologies, western defense experts say.

The next launch expected in the third or fourth quarter of next year would carry a load of about 1,750 kg to 1,800 kg and a subsequent third test would aim for a 2,000 kg load, when the rocket would officially enter India's space programme, he said.

The second GSLV test will place an advanced remote sensing satellite along with a German and a Belgian satellite which would have minor commercial spinoffs, he said. GSLV will be inducted into the country's regular satellite launch system after two more developmental flights.

Wednesday’s GSLV launch sent a murmur of excitement through the American commercial and military space establishments. "This is huge, this is a big deal," Jim Banke, a senior producer for space.com who has covered launches at Cape Canaveral for 15 years said. "This puts India into the big league. Imagine someone introducing a new car into the US market. Imagine how GM and Ford will react. This is going to send shock wave through the aerospace industry."

The initial reading is the successful GSLV launch gives India the capability and the confidence to eventually enter the commercial satellite launch market that is estimated to be in the range of $10 to $20 billion annually. Currently only the United States, European Union, Russia, China, and Japan have the capability. The EU space agency Ariane commands nearly half the market, followed by the US, Russia, and China.

The US scientific community also appeared pretty sanguine about the potential military implications of the GSLV success. Although Space.com's Banke said the GSLV clearly signalled that India had achieved a ICBM capability, John Pike, a security expert formerly with the Federation of American Scientists and now Director of Global Security.org, said that capability has already been demonstrated with the PSLV.

"The only difference between India's satellite launch vehicles and a ballistic missile is a coat of paint," Pike said. "The only difference between a launch vehicle and a missile is the payload. The payload can be a satellite. Or it can be a nuclear bomb," agreed Banke.

But the US officialdom, which tried to scuttle the transfer of cryogenic engine technology to India to cap such capability, maintained a studied official silence on the development. In fact, against the backdrop of the latest launch, the Indian space and nuclear establishment is having one of its rare contacts with the US scientific dispensation next week. The top minds of the Indian scientific and security apparatus including Dr Raja Ramanna and Prof U R Rao will be here for a dialogue with the United States Centre for International Security and Arms Control.

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Indian Chip Market Promises Big Growth 30 April 2001, By New York Times

BANGALORE - India's semiconductor chip market will grow by a compound annual rate of more than 24 percent to reach $1.20 billion by 2005, Frost & Sullivan India Ltd forecast in a study.

Global chip makers will see growth in India despite an economic slowdown in top markets such as the United States and Europe, a spokesman of the marketing consultancy firm told Reuters. The growth rate in India will be boosted by strong demand from the telecom equipment and consumer electronic sectors, the report said to be released in late May.

Most top global chip makers including Motorola, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices have set up design centers in India but the chips are not manufactured in the country because of stiff Indian custom laws.

The high demand for the semiconductor sector in India is mainly coming from the traditional end-user segments including telecom equipment, consumer electronics, IT hardware and industrial electronics, the report said.

“The convergence of IT, telecom and digital entertainment will continue to drive growth for integrated circuits In India through 2005," Frost & Sullivan said. "Other end-user segments such as smart card applications and automotive electronics that are established globally but still nascent in India will add to the demand."

The report said demand for semiconductor chips in India comes from many sectors unlike in the United States, Europe and Japan where the demand was mostly from personal computer and consumer electronics segment.

Many chip makers have begun to work with end-user companies in India to tap demand besides working with distributors, it said.

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Entrepreneur, wife pledge $40 million to cancer fight
25 April 2001, The Chicago Tribune

NOVI, MICHIGAN - In one of the largest private health-care donations in Michigan, information technologies entrepreneur Raj Vattikuti and his wife on Tuesday pledged $40 million for cancer programs at Beaumont and Henry Ford hospitals.

Vattikuti, founder of Farmington Hills-based Covansys, and his wife, Padma, are giving the money through the Vattikuti Foundation. They gave each hospital $4 million Tuesday, and Vattikuti said he expects to provide the rest of the pledge over the next 10 to 12 years.

The money will support programs that focus on prostate cancer research and treatment at Henry Ford Health System and breast cancer programs at Beaumont Hospitals. The effort "has the potential to do so much good in southeast Michigan and throughout the world," Gov. John Engler said at a news conference announcing the pledges.

As the most common forms of cancer among women and men respectively, breast and prostate cancer leave almost no one untouched, the governor said. The two hospital systems are to work together to share data and research on the causes and treatments of the diseases.

"We are challenging these two institutions to achieve new clinical knowledge through research, new treatment methods and expanded awareness and education, with the hope of preventing prostate and breast cancers," Raj Vattikuti said.

Vattikuti came to the United States from India in 1974 as a graduate student in engineering and computer science at Wayne State University. He worked for Chrysler Corp. before founding Complete Business Solutions Inc. (CBSI) in 1985. In February, its name became Covansys.

The company, which began with a staff of 20, now employs 5,000 workers. Its customers include General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG, as well as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other public agencies.

Dr. Mani Menom, chief of urology at Henry Ford, said the gift exemplifies an ideal expressed in the Hindu scriptures the Bhagavad Gita: "Oneness with God is reached through action."

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