MindTree consortium leads race to bag UID biometric contract

14 Jul 2010 Evaluate

A consortium led by Bangalore's MindTree Ltd and US-based Accenture has emerged the frontrunner to win a contract from the Unique ID Authority of India to perform biometric verification duties of more than a billion Indians, scoring a stunning upset over a handful of tech powerhouses, including Tata Consultancy Services. The contract is valued at nearly Rs 200 crore initially as 10 crore Indians are due to get their Unique ID numbers in the first phase, but has the potential to grow substantially as more people are enrolled in the ambitious project.

The MindTree team, which includes biometric providers Daon of Ireland and Lithuania's Nueurotechnologia, pitched the lowest at Rs 2.75 a biometric authentication, according to sources. MindTree's bid is set to help it beat out at least eight companies such as Mahindra Satyam that partnered France's Morpho to bid Rs 8.76 a transaction while HP, US-based L1 ID Solutions and India's 4GID together bid Rs 9.75. Cogent Systems of the US allied with France's Steria bid Rs 23.30. TCS, also India's largest e-governance provider, was technically disqualified for a second time. Infosys Technologies and Wipro Technologies, the country's second and third-biggest IT companies, stayed away from the bids.

Under the contract, the winner will handle all de-duplication and verification requests from private and public agencies such as banks and insurance companies at peak load rates of 10 lakh an hour. The government will pay the winning consortium a quoted price when a verification request is sent. A senior UIDAI official said the government was in the final stages of evaluating the bids, adding that the contract could be awarded as early as this week. Ultimately the question remains whether the most complicated solution in UID project will be procured on the basis of sheer low bids or capability to meet the technology challenge.

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