Technology savvy kids could be the order of the day soon. One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), an American non-profit organisation, aims to live up to its name by offering laptops to children in the age group of 6-13 years for just Rs 15,000. These ‘XO’ laptops as they are called, would be introduced in schools within the 2009 calendar year. “We are presently talking to many schools, mainly in Delhi and Pune, and expect more than 50,000 schools to be working with the principle of one laptop per child within the next couple of years,” Satish Jha, president and chief executive officer of One Laptop Per Child told Financial Chronicle.

At present, there are around 1,000 OLPC laptops circulating in the country across six schools of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Some of the schools that have adopted these laptops are ‘Katha’ schools in Delhi, schools in Khairat village in Maharashtra and the Parikrama centres of learning in Bangalore.

The company is trying to rope in big names from corporate India to invest in this initiative as a part of their CSR functions. “Companies like Bajaj Auto are evaluating investing into this initiative. Some companies have asked us for proposals upto 1,000 laptops and there are some states that have asked for 1,50,000 laptops,” Jha said.

Priced at Rs 15,000, the laptops would not be available in the retail market, and Jha ruled out any possibility of the same in the future. Intel has its own version of cheap and affordable laptop called Intel Classmate PC priced at $300 (approx Rs 15,000).

Taiwan-based Quanta Computer manufactures ‘XO’ laptops which comes with features like 512 MB RAM speed, 1 GB hardisk, three USB drives and a camera. The company is in dialogue with several state governments for promoting this principle and making it viable. “We are reaching out to each state and union territory government as well as the central ministry of school education, top 100 corporations in India as well as some high net-worth individuals, foundations and NGOs,” Jha said.