The most significant innovation in computer technology in 2001 was not Apple’s gleaming titanium PowerBook G4 or Microsoft’s Windows XP. It was the Simputer. This is computing as it would have looked if Gandhi had invented it, then used Steve Jobs for his ad campaign.
Source: Bruce Sterling in a The New York Times article published December 2001
Was Simputer ahead of time?
Was it a failure or success? Depending who you ask, the answers can be as varied as possible.
To understand what happened with what the NY Times once described as the product of the year, I decided to sit down with IISc professor, scientist, and entrepreneur, V. Vinay, for this episode of the Outliers Podcast.
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Headline updated at 4:10pm on November 3, 2014 for language. The earlier headline read "Outliers 38: V Vinay on whether Simputer was a success and failure".
Disclosure: FactorDaily is owned by SourceCode Media, which counts Accel Partners, Blume Ventures and Vijay Shekhar Sharma among its investors. Accel Partners is an early investor in Flipkart. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder of Paytm. None of FactorDaily’s investors have any influence on its reporting about India’s technology and startup ecosystem.
