Idea Lab

Building a Social Entrepreneurial Garage Startup in India

by Aaditeshwar Seth
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Moving from ideas to execution is an ultra cool feeling. Gram Vaani is finally on the go and we are all extremely excited to see our dreams taking shape. The garage startup mode I always used to wonder what a Silicon Valley garage startup would feel like. Well, here's what it looks like -- a social entrepreneurial garage startup in India. This is Bala in his pyjamas, with dozens of audio cables and connectors strewn out on his desk in a manner that only he understands. Bala spends part of his day reading Kafka, and the rest of his day...

• January 24, 2009
• 5 comments

Job Openings at Social Entrepreneurial Startup

by Aaditeshwar Seth
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Company background: Gram Vaani is a social entrepreneurial startup focused on building innovative models of media delivery for rural areas of India. Media is an important agency to bring social change and responsible politics, but novel technological and business methods are required to successfully and scalably enable services in the challenging rural environments. Our open-source product line is aimed at low-cost systems co designed with local communities, and has been funded by the Knight Foundation of the US as part of their prestigious global news challenge competition for 2008. Join our young and high powered team for an extremely satisfying,...

• November 9, 2008
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$100 Laptop Redesign

by Aaditeshwar Seth
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

A new laptop design for the one-laptop-per-child project is being worked out. They have removed the keyboard and replaced it by a touch screen. This turns into a touch sensitive keyboard during normal operation, and the laptop can be used as an e-book reader otherwise. The price is $75, which sounds too good to be true. I used to be very critical of the OLPC project during its earlier stages because I could not understand the rationale behind giving a personal laptop to each child, instead of having them access a shared PC in a kiosk for example. The kiosk...

• July 3, 2008
• 3 comments

How Community Radio Becomes the 'Voice of the Village'

by Aaditeshwar Seth
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

It all started in the Tetherless Computing Lab at the University of Waterloo. Our research group led by Prof. S. Keshav prototyped an extremely low-cost software and hardware platform called KioskNet, for providing Internet connectivity in rural areas. The first pilot deployment was done in May 2006 in the village of Anandpuram in the Vizag district of Andhra Pradesh (India), and has since been followed by deployments in West Bengal (India) and Ghana (Africa). But we soon realized that providing a communication infrastructure to rural areas is not even half of the story. It is useless unless appropriate applications are...

• June 23, 2008
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