New York: The Intelligent Community Forum today named Suneet Singh Tuli, 44, the co-founder and CEO of DataWind Ltd., as Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year for 2014. The Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year Award is presented to an individual or an organization that has taken a leadership role in promoting broadband technology and applications as an essential and transformative utility in the Digital Age. Mr. Tuli was cited for the development of the Aakash II/UbiSlate tablets, which the Intelligent Community Forum believes will revolutionize access to knowledge for billions of people and stabilize communities in the process. The tablet is the world’s cheapest computer, according toForbesMagazine.
Discussing the selection of Suneet Singh Tuli, a native of India, as the Forum’s Visionary of the Year, Intelligent Community Forumco-founder Lou Zacharilla said, “Suneet is one of those people who understands perfectly what low-cost access means to the future of the community. His tablet and platform, which is sold for under US$40, can change the game for ‘the other fourbillion’ who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
DataWind’s Aakash/UbiSlate tablets – a line of affordable mobile Internet devices – have been a truly revolutionary product. The Aakash II, launched in 2012 at the United Nations by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, has begun to empower people in ways never before imagined. ForbesMagazine named Mr. Tulias one of the world’s top 15 classroom revolutionaries. Using this device, Tuliand DataWind hope to completely change education in the developing world.
In response to the award Mr. Tuli commented, “I am humbled and honored to receive this distinction. It is a great privilege for me and DataWind to be part of the Intelligent Community Forum, a global initiative that is dedicated to empowerment and inclusion of the digitally disenfranchised. DataWind is committed to continue and discover newer ways of breaching the affordability barriers for Internet access and in effect help the next four billion join the Internet age.”