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Ernest C. Mercier Lecture: Connecting the forgotten billions

Imagine living without Google, Facebook or Twitter.

DataWind Founder Suneet with the UbiSlate

DataWind Founder Suneet Singh Tuli with the UbiSlate

For more than four billion people in the world, this is their reality. In India, these are the forgotten billions.

On Thursday, Feb. 5, from 5:30 to 8pm, hear how DataWind founder Suneet Singh Tuli is providing a way to get these forgotten billions connected to the Internet using the world’s cheapest tablet computer and how this is revolutionizing educational access in the developing world. Singh Tuli is the featured presenter of the 2015 Ernest C. Mercier Lecture in Entrepreneurial Science. The lecture will take place in the Robert R. McEwen Auditorium, in the Schulich School of Business, Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus.

Singh Tuli is the founder and CEO of DataWind Ltd., and is responsible for its overall vision, strategy and execution. He has 23 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur, having previously launched two successful companies that conducted Initial Public Offerings on the NASDAQ stock market.

At DataWind and previous ventures, patented technologies were created to develop scanning, printing and imaging products that set world records in both price and performance. The innovative products and technologies created through these ventures have received numerous awards and accolades, including recognition by the Guinness Book of Records. Earlier this year, DataWind was also named to MIT Technology Review's 2014 50 Smartest Companies list recognizing the world's most innovative companies. Most recently, DataWind’s Aakash/UbiSlate tablets have received worldwide attention, as the company executes a vision to empower the next three billion people with computing and Internet access. On November 28, 2012, DataWind’s Aakash2 tablet computer was launched at the United Nations by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

About the Mercier Lecture

Ernest C. Mercier

Ernest C. Mercier

In an effort to inspire and empower future generations of chemistry students at York with a sense of the possible, Mr. Mercier's wife, Eileen Mercier, a York graduate (MBA '77), established the lecture series in her late husband's name.

Bridging the worlds of business and commerce with the intensive research world of chemistry, the series will present an entrepreneur and renowned scientist who has used his/her own science education as a springboard to other enterprises. "Ernest believed that the benefits of discipline and analytical thinking, which his engineering education provided, were basic to understanding the cause-and-effect laws of business." says Ms. Mercier. "This lectureship will hopefully inspire others to use their education in similarly unique ways."

This event is generously supported by Ms. Mercier and presented by the Lassonde School of Engineering and the Schulich School of Business.

Registration is required. For more information, visit the 2015 Ernest C. Mercier Lecture in Entrepreneurial Science webpage.