EPIC Foundation, the not-for-profit foundation has launched the first  Designed in India, AI-enabled, indigenously manufactured Education Tablet.
Designed by VVDN Technologies in collaboration with MediaTek India and CoRover.ai, the tablets come embedded with unique features of Repairability and Upgradability to address the pressing concerns of the digital divide and the accumulation of electronic refuse in India.
EPIC Foundation executed an MOU with VVDN Technologies and UTL to authorise UTL to manufacture PC tablets under licence from EPIC and VVDN; the intent is to manufacture upto two to three lakh tablets targeted for supply to state governments. 

The launch was presided by S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY,  Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs together with Dr Ajai Chowdhry, Founder & Chairman, EPIC Foundation and Arjun Malhotra, Co-Founder, EPIC Foundation.

Krishnan said: “It is a matter of great pride that we are launching an India-designed, India-inspired education tablet which will be of great use to a vast majority of students. It will inspire the youth to take up the mantra of design and making things in India, for India and for the world. Today’s event captures two elements that we have been speaking about quite a bit in the recent past – the first and most important is to design hardware products in India. I am aware that Dr. Ajai Chowdhry is a very passionate advocate of this mantra of making India a Product Nation. He has led a number of initiatives in this direction; the committee chaired by the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister on Making India a Product Nation is his brainchild and his concept, which he pushed with us, and we readily accepted.” 

Dr. Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman EPIC Foundation said “Aligned with our overarching goal of elevating Indian Electronics to real Atmanirbharta, we want to build products in such a way that the components are easily replaceable and upgradable. Repair expenses surpassing the cost of purchasing a new device, the production of substandard goods and obsolescence strategies are not only pressing concerns of today but also exacerbate the escalating problem of electronic waste. Our repairable product will enable many jobs all over India for repair engineers.” 

The education tablet is first of its kind to come integrated with the BharatGPT virtual assistant and will highlight AI/ML based inter-lingual translation for Indian Languages (Voice-2-Voice, Text-2-Text etc) to support language diversity of India and inclusion of differently abled fellow citizens. 

An MOU for 12000 tablets was also inked between IRIS Global and Vedavaag Systems Ltd. Vedavaag is a publicly listed financial inclusion company operating 6000 Citizen Service Centres for public sector banks across India to provide basic services in remote areas.