One Laptop per Child Lands in India

The Indian government wasn't interested, so OLPC partners with Reliance ADA Group to bring computers to India's primary school kids

Students at the Marathi medium school at Khairat have been selected to take part in an India pilot study launched by One Laptop per Child (OLPC). PAL PILLAI/AFP/Getty Images

By Nandini Lakshman

Nicholas Negroponte has found it tough going in India. For years as the head of MIT's Media Lab, the famed computer scientist promoted radical ways to use technology to transform society. His best-known idea is the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program (BusinessWeek, 6/5/08), a plan to make a simple, $100 laptop that would create a digitally literate generation in the hardscrabble classrooms of emerging-market nations. The laptop, now dubbed the XO, is finally being mass-produced in China.

In 2001, the computer scientist came to India to promote the Media Lab, but failed to impress New Delhi. Negroponte clearly fell off the India map, when then-Information Technology Minister Arun Shourie dismissed his efforts as "pedagogically suspect" and wanted more accountability. When Negroponte's nonprofit One Laptop per Child foundation approached the Indian government in 2006, his project was again rebuffed by India's then-Education Secretary, Sudeep Banerjee (BusinessWeek.com, 8/16/06).

Two years later, Negroponte is back to open a new office in New Delhi and launch the OLPC program in India on Aug. 4. Despite all the rebuffs, Negroponte's urge to sell in India is stronger than ever. "India is the largest market for us, and I had to be here," he says. More important, Negroponte has a new partner—one of India's politically influential private-sector conglomerates. The Digital Bridge Foundation, part of Reliance ADA Group, owned by Indian billionaire Anil Ambani, is providing the technology backbone and logistics for the installation of OLPC's white and green XO laptops in primary schools.

OLPC has started out by giving its laptops free to Reliance, which has been in charge of distributing them and building awareness in India. Now, though, the time has come for both the U.S. non-profit and Reliance to accelerate the rollout. To do that, Reliance has set up the Digital Bridge Foundation, a charitable arm that will work with OLPC and pursue other proposals.

As they work together, the two sides have had their share of challenges. For instance, while Reliance officials characterize their relationship with OLPC as a partnership, executives from the U.S. non-profit describe it slightly differently. "Reliance created the Digital Bridge Foundation to help, but we have no formal partnership with Reliance," says Negroponte. The rhetorical tweak could be useful in India. State governments and development organizations in the country have tended to be skeptical about being openly associated with the private sector. "We believe that the industry does not have a similar passion like us, and their intentions often tend to have a commercial tinge," says Sai Prakash, head of Erin Foundation, a non-government organization based in Bangalore that does work promoting IT in the Indian countryside.

Whether you call it a partnership, an alliance, or something else, the relationship between OLPC and the Reliance-backed foundation is a complete change.

Seeking Inroads into India

This new partnership is a complete change from OLPC's global moves, which generally involve exclusive deals with governments in various countries as the best way to reach students. Today, Negroponte and his band of evangelists are ready to try anything to sell their laptops quickly: "Scale," says Negroponte, "is key to OLPC." So unlike other countries like Peru and Uruguay, for instance, where the XO laptops are completely funded by the federal state, the Indian blend will include corporations, industry bodies, and state governments. Recruiting Reliance and other allies may overcome New Delhi's lingering reluctance toward technology spending in primary education.