Datawind ended its relationship with Quad in January. In a statement, chief executive Suneet Singh Tuli said that Electronics breached Datawind's intellectual property rights."Quad circumvented our relationship with IIT-Rajasthan, signed a direct memorandum of understanding with them and then sold off its inventory in the open market," Tuli said.
People close to the development said that Datawind is evaluating new manufacturing partners in Noida and Cochin but nothing has been finalised yet.
Datawind had made a commitment to deliver the devices by end of March. "We started taking pre-payments at the end of January, offering delivery in 8 weeks starting end of March - we're about two weeks late from that date," Tuli said. "We expect to catch up to our promised delivery schedule by end of April." he adds.
Founded by Raminder Soin, former managing partner of Tata Cellular, Quad is a product lifecycle management company that also undertakes electronics manufacturing for original equipment makers. For Aakash project, Quad was responsible for making the touchscreen panels for the Android tablets. The touch panels were later claimed to be faulty, in a communication between IIT Rajasthan and Datawind, a copy of the letter is with ET. Quad's Soin did not reply to a questionnaire sent by ET.
