Iris Global Services has launched its Make in India (MII) Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled, indigenously manufactured education tablet Milkyway at India Habitat Center on February 13 amidst a grand celebration.

The Tab is designed by EPIC Foundation, a non-profit organization headed by Dr. Ajai Chowdhry. The launch was jointly announced by stakeholders from VVDN Technologies, CoRovers.AI, along with Iris Global Services.

S Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, GOI, who was present at the launch, 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.”

Iris at the same time also signed an MOU for delivering 12,000 units of its Milkyway Tabs with Vedavag, a public listed financial inclusion company running 6,000 Citizen Service Centers for public sector banks PAN India to provide basic services in the remote areas. With banking customers like SBI, PNB etc. they are always abreast with cutting edge technology to deliver services to the last mile.

Himanshu Chawla, Director, CEO & Co-Founder, Iris Waves with Rama Seshu Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, Automation Division, Vedavaag Systems signed the MOU and exchanged the papers. The announcement, after the launch, proved the company’s commitment to the cause of Make in India or MII.

Chawla said, “We are excited about this First n Best in Class fully Repairable & Upgradeable Milkyway Tablet by Iris and the immense opportunities it presents in the Edutech space for our partners and customers.”

Manufactured by VVDN Technologies in collaboration with MediaTek India and CoRover.ai, the Milkyway AI-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.

Chairman EPIC Foundation Ajai Chowdhry said, “Aligned with our overarching goal of elevating Indian electronics to real Atmanirbhar Bharat or self-reliance, we want to build products in such a way that the components are easily replaceable and upgradable.”

The new Tablet will address two critical aspects of education and social empowerment - drive demand for ‘Indian, repairable, sustainable’ electronics products and brands in high impact high-volume categories; and remove financial and logistical obstacles that prevent schools from obtaining repairable, high impact devices and increase life of the product.

Aimed at playing an active enabler of digital learning, the education tablet comes integrated with the BharatGPT virtual assistant and will highlight AI/ML based inter-lingual translation for Indian languages to support language diversity of India and inclusion of differently abled fellow citizens.

Founder CMD, Iris Global, Sanjiv Krishen said, “The demand for indigenously manufactured educational tablets in states is very encouraging. The new tab comes with a variety of use cases. Crucially, it is repairable and upgradable. Adding an AI-enabled education tablet represents the high-water mark of our MII dream”.

Krishen said that the objective has been served because all original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of IT products are gearing up to make their products in India. Dell, HP, and others have all increased their capacities to meet the demand for IT products. The ban on importing products, like laptops, has led to most manufacturers progressing from import to local manufacturing, which was giving Make in India, a great boost.

“EPIC is happy to have an OEM partner like IRIS Global to scale First Designed in India PC Tablet under brand “Milkyway”; Wish them all the best to be preferred brand for the students” Chowdhry concluded.