BSNL, HCL justify price of Bharat PC

NEW DELHI, INDIA: BSNL and HCL tried to justify the price of Bharat PC on an event jointly organized by Confederation of Indian Industries, HCL and Intel here on Tuesday.

In a bid to increase broadband penetration in rural India, BSNL has entered in to an agreement with HCL, under the National Broadband Penetration Project (NBPP), to provide affordable PC for the rural masses with subsidy support of Rs 4,500 per computing device with broadband connection, from USO Fund.

A rural customer is required to pay Rs 2250 cash down payment for this PC and rest of the payment can be made in installments under two schemes of either Rs 455 per month for 36 months or Rs 300 per month for Rs 60 months. The total price of PC hence comes out to be 18630 and Rs 20250. Without subsidy the price would have been Rs 23130 and Rs 24750 respectively.

“The Bharat PC concept had not been well understood. Behind just providing a simple PC and broadband there is lot that we had to do. It is not just providing a PC to rural person and the price is not just product price,” said Ajai Chowdhury, chairman and CEO HCL Infosystems in response to CIOL question on pricing of Bharat PC.

He said the total price includes product price, the service price, cost of finance and lot more that as gone in to the concept.

“We have set-up call centers to provide the support in multiple Indian languages to the Bharat PC customers. We have created specific capability in terms of supply chain, service, call center and it terms of finance. We do not want them to buy computer for Rs 15000 or Rs 20000 by paying upfront. That would have put an end to interest to rural customers. We have developed a specific supply chain management for this PC,” he added.

HCL claims to have offices in 170 cities, 500 service centers and reaches to 4000 towns in India through which it provides quality service to its customers. Despite this vast reach HCL has shown commitment to the cause and made supply chain and developed service capability specific to Bharat PC.

Bharat PC will be loaded with genuine Windows Vista Starter (an operating system from Microsoft Corporation which even the company considers a failure), Intel 945 GSE chipset, Intel Atom processor N230, 512 MB memory, 80 GB hard disk, ATX cabinet, Internet multimedia keyboard and optical scroll mouse, 15 inch CRT monitor, anti-virus with one year validity (BSNL says it will be for 5 years), ADSL2 modem, Windows Live essential. The system will have five years' warranty.

The price of this is higher to the rest available in the market. Acer sells a PC in the name of e-machines configured around Intel N230 processor with 1GB DDR2 667 MHz memory, 160 GB SATA hard disk, DVD writer with other accessories for Rs 9990 only, exclusive of taxes.

Acer also promises one year onsite warranty on this across 187 location in India. However one will have to pay approximately Rs 4000 for 15inch CRT monitor and Rs 3000 extra for Windows XP operating system. The total cost in this way will come to Rs 17000 approximately, which is less expensive than Bharat PC and has better configuration than it. If this PC was to be subsidized, then price would further come down to Rs 12500.

The lowest range of HCL PC (EZEEBEE TOP XP T819 PDC) on Windows Vista Platform is built around Intel Pentium Dual Core processor E2220 and is priced at Rs.22990, without subsidy, according to its website, which is less than the price of Bharat PC.

In fact its another PC on Linux platform built around Intel Atom 230 Processor and higher configuration to Bharat PC is priced at Rs 16990, without subsidy.

When asked about the break-up of the total cost of Bharat PC, AK Jain, general manager, broadband said, “Bharat PC is rightly priced. The cost of the PC alone is Rs 13500. There are various services attached to it to make it easy for rural customers to run this PC and use broadband. Transportation cost of each PC is Rs 3000, Rs 6000 has been charged as cost of finance, Rs 3000 for maintenance, Rs 1000 cost of insurance, anti-virus for five years. Simultaneously we have given freebies like Microsoft education software, MS Office and Internet explorer 8.”

As per the break-up given by Jain, total price of Bharat PC does not match the price of PC as announced by BSNL. The total price as per this break-up comes to Rs 26,500!

Whatever be the price, BSNL is ready to launch this Bharat PC that has support of Rs 1500 crore USO fund subsidy, is ready to make in rural land of the country. This PC was scheduled to be launched for rural customers from last 1st October but due to some contractual correction between BSNL and HCL because of which it will be now available from November 1, 2009.