A laptop manufacturing joint venture of UST Global, the Kerala government and Acceleron Labs will debut its first set of laptops at the Electronic Manufacturing Summit 2019 in New Delhi. Coconics, the recent laptop manufacturing PPP in Kerala, also enjoys Intel’s technology hand-holding. “In the first phase, Coconics aims the educational, business and e-governance segments. Later, this can feed other sectors too,” chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in a Facebook post.
Coconics is a slim and lightweight notebook, eyeing schools, colleges and academic institutions. The CC11A notebook comes with a 11-inch HD display, Intel Celeron N4000 processor, 2GB RAM and 64GB eMMC storage. Currently, the state government participation is through Keltron and its industry promotion outfit KSIDC. Keltron’s manufacturing facility at Manvilla, near Thiruvananthapuram, has currently capacity to produce 2.5 lakh laptops per year, state’s IT secretary M Sivasankar said.
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Intel’s involvement in the project is through the start-up it supports, Acceleron Labs. UST Global has 49%, Keltron 26%, KSIDC 23% and Intel India maker Lab accelerated start up Acceleron Labs, the rest of the minority stakes in the Coconics laptop JV. Around a year ago, Singapore-based Temasek Holdings bought a $250-million stake in Chanderias-led UST Global, propelling the Kerala-nurtured IT firm to a digital transformation unicorn. Temasek is usually reputed to invest in infrastructure, financial services, consumer business etc, with stakes in firms such as Bank of Singapore and Alibaba Group.
‘Project Coconics’, according to Kerala industry minister EP Jayarajan, “is meant to integrate the capacities of public sector with those of IT firms and start-ups with innovative ideas”.
