Mahindra Satyam wants 'biometric logo' in Africa

Mahindra Satyam (the brand identity of Satyam Computer Services Limited), which along with its consortium partner Morpho, has been selected as one of the three vendors to implement and deliver the Aadhaar programme by UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), is seeing significant amount of business  in developing and developed nations for biometric solutions.

"Biometric competency is very limited in India. And, whosoever does this UID project will develop tremendous biometric business. It (UID) positions us (Satyam) very nicely to address a large market, which is global in nature. Though we cannot make any estimates at present, the whole effort is whether we can cut and paste the competency in developing and developed economies like the US and Europe," says Mahindra Satyam head - operations (India, West Asia and Africa) Dilip Jha.

Jha says the company had a very good name in Africa right now and wanted to leverage it. "Everyone has gone and seen the Mahindra logo during the Fifa World Cup 2010. We want to put a biometric logo next to it."

While Mahindra Satyam's partner Morpho, part of the French conglomerate Safran Group, will develop and maintain systems that will cross-check new applications by sifting through the biometric database, Mahindra Satyam will integrate and provide support across platforms and databases.

"We have already negotiated with a hardware vendor based out of India, on whose hardware we will run Morpho's Oracle-based software. All the work will be done from Bangalore," he says.

The consortium will deploy about 25 professional in each state for the UID project, of which 80 per cent will be from Mahindra Satyam, according to Jha.

As part of the Phase-I of the UID project, all the three vendors are supposed to cover 200 million population. "The best vendor is likely to get Rs 27 crore (Rs 270 million), in addition to Rs 6-7 crore (RS 60-70 million) of hardware reimbursement.

Though the value of the project is divided between the three vendors, we should get more than one-third as we are technically a top-ranking firm," he says.