NASSCOM Product Council launches ‘Aadhaar Diffusion Project'

BANGALORE, INDIA: NASSCOM Product Council today announced the launch of the ‘Aadhaar Diffusion Project'; a unique effort in collaboration with UIDAI to accelerate the development of applications and services that leverage the Aadhaar identity infrastructure.

The launch, organized on the sidelines of NASSCOM Product Conclave, witnessed Nandan Nilekani, chairman, UIDAI 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.

Talking about the initiative, Nandan Nilekani said, "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," he added.

"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 Nilekani.

Aadhaar Diffusion Project is a collaborative effort with UIDAI to accelerate development of applications and services that leverage Aadhaar identity infrastructure.

Highlighting the impact this initiative could create, Som Mittal, president, NASSCOM said, "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.

Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, NASSCOM Product Council said "The initiative spearheaded by the NASSCOM Product Council in association with UIDAI, is a positive step towards utilizing technology for improving the lives of our residents. We are proud to be a part of this project and are hopeful that it will become a prime example of how the latest technological advancements can help improve governance."

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.

The resident authorized electronic KYC (Know your Customer) acts as a gateway to several services like bank accounts and insurance policies. Aadhaar as a payment address provides the basis for transforming payments and the entire platform is architected for building innovative applications.

The initiative will link Aadhaar with various IT based applications that help residents utilize the benefits of this infrastructure to the optimum.