NASSCOM to help grow Aadhaar apps in India

30th October 2013
NASSCOM to help grow Aadhaar apps in India

Bangalore, October, 30 2013: National Association of Software and Service Companies(NASSCOM), the trade body of the Indian  IT software and services industry  and the Universal Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI) have joined in an ‘Aadhaar Diffusion Project’, to accelerate the development of applications and services that leverage the Aadhaar identity infrastructure.

The launch, organized on the sidelines of NASSCOM Product Conclave,  saw Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI; Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM and Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, NASSCOM Product Council sharing a roadmap on how this initiative could play a key role in catalyzing the socio-economic development of the country.

 Said Nandan Nilekani: “The launch of ‘Aadhaar Diffusion Project’ is an important step towards building a vibrant and innovation centric ecosystem on the Aadhaar platform. The goal is to achieve widespread diffusion of Aadhaar platform knowledge across new entrepreneurial ventures and existing software companies to assist and nurture Aadhaar capabilities across a broad range of software applications and services to benefit residents, government and enterprises. We are sure that this initiative with NASSCOM will go a long way to help build an innovative application ecosystem for Aadhaar and deliver widespread benefits to residents of India.”

Added  Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM:  With the ‘Aadhaar Diffusion Project’, our vision is to create a vibrant technology ecosystem that brings together key stakeholders and build on the identity infrastructure. We are hopeful that this initiative will help residents move towards a unique identity that can be authenticated anytime, anywhere”.

As part of the initiative, NASSCOM plans to hold a number of activities to evangelize software developers; Annual Developer Conference, Hackathons, App Contests and Bootcamps. The Aadhaar Diffusion Project’ will also run Awards in varied categories as well as have certification programs in partnership with a leading industry certification organization and leveraging existing UIDAI programs.

With over 460 million Aadhaar numbers being issued, this digital identity infrastructure provides a unique identity number to a resident of India which can be verified anywhere, anytime using fingerprint, iris and OTP authentication.