A woman in Bangalore shows how the Amida Simputer works. (PTI)

Bangalore, March 28: A unique gadget with its “Made in India” label, launched in Bangalore on Friday night, has caught the eye of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and prompted him to call the design team with a number of questions. The First Citizen’s call came during the launch of India’s first innovative hand-held device, christened Amida Simputer, a simple computer designed to bridge the digital divide.

Kalam’s voice came live through a cellphone enquiring about the simputer’s cost, its operating system, whether it works on GPS (global positioning system) and its other features.

Among those who responded to the President’s queries here were Prof. . Balakrishnan, head of the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Y. Gopala Rao, chairman and managing director of the public sector Bharat Electronics Ltd, and other IISc scientists who innovated Amida.

The President also handed out some advice to these scientists: upgrade the design at regular intervals, ensure the quality promised with cost-effectiveness and deliver the product to the market in time.

“When people require your product and the market demand goes up, you must be able to roll it out in time and maintain the quality mentioned on it,” Kalam told them.

Congratulating the scientists — V. Vinay, Swami Manohar, Ahmad Fatehally and Vijay Chandrau — for conceiving, designing and developing the product indigenously, the President said he was proud of the IISc for turning such dons into entrepreneurs and setting up PicoPeta Simputers Ltd.

Amida, meaning “unbounded” in Buddhism, is the first commercially-viable computer to be designed and produced in India. The promoting company has applied for a global patent.

This is a user-friendly device, for one will be able to use it to browse the Internet and send e-mail using a landline or phones with CDMA technology, tune in to MP3 music since it doubles up as a virtual juke box, organise schedules, accounts, notes and even play games.

Coming in three variants, Amida is a product of PicoPeta Simputers and BEL, the Bangalore-based leading defence public sector enterprise which also manufactures civilian products and the electronic voting machines.

Priced between Rs 9,950 and Rs 19,900, including a premium colour model, Amida will be promoted and marketed by BEL through its sales offices in the country and third-party agencies subsequently.

The product, with Linux as its operating system, will also be available through a website, www.amidasimputer.com, and exclusive showrooms that will be opened soon in major cities and towns.

On the sidelines of the launch, Gopala Rao told reporters: “Beginning April, we will be rolling out about 10,000 Amidas per month from our Bangalore facility. During the ensuing fiscal year (2004-05), we expect to sell about 50,000 in the country. Since our production lines are scalable, we can ramp up the numbers to 100,000 next year and double it up to meet its sales volumes.”

The joint partners have decided to tap the export market only after popularising Amida in the subcontinent. Claimed to be the world’s first such device, Amida has been co-developed to empower the people with digital access, anywhere, anytime.

The founders of PicoPeta are all scientists-turned-entrepreneurs — chairman and chief technologist V. Vinay, CEO Swami Manhohar, chief hardware architect Ahmad Fatehally and COO Vijay Chandra.

“Amida is packed with several innovative features, enabling return to handwriting in any language, doodle (using stylus) on any screen and mail the scribbling with a click. It is designed to be a full-fledged device on its own. With two USB ports, it can be used for a range of devices such as printers, digital cameras and independent keyboards to operate as a desktop PC,” said Vinay during a demonstration of the gadget.