Online Aadhaar Hackathon encourages Indian developers to develop unique apps using UIDAI's platform

The aim of the Aadhaar hackathon is to encourage and promote the development of applications that utilize the open Aadhaar APIs. The online hackathon is open to participants across India and will require them to take an online entry test to ensure they meet minimum eligibility criterion.

The event will see qualified participants indulge in a non-stop 2 day coding marathon. Starting from June 6-7 2015, developers will build products under any of the following categories: Government Benefits, Financial Services (banking, insurance, and brokerage), Payments, Healthcare, FMCG, and Online + Offline (O2O).

AngelPrime, a seed-stage Venture Capital Fund based in Bangalore and NASSCOM, in collaboration with UIDAI, will host this online “Aadhaar Application Hackathon” from June 6-7, 2015.

Vijay S Madan, Director General & Mission Director, UIDAI said, "The Aadhaar platform provides ‘authentication’ and ‘eKYC services’ in respect of over 825 million Aadhaar holders, on a real-time-basis. Not only is this verification service unparalleled in the world, there exist immense possibilities of its usage by National and State Government agencies, businesses and other institutions to deliver benefits, services and products, across the country instantaneously. Aadhaar platform is based on a robust technology that rides on mobile connectivity and enables ubiquity. It offers a great opportunity to its stakeholders; the growing community of technology developers, the start-up eco-system and the investor groups to maximize user experience in a variety of fields. I wish NASSCOM and its partners a great success in Aadhaar Eco-System Diffusion Project.”

Developers are invited to participate in this unique online coding event which will look at building compelling applications that leverage the Aadhaar platform.

Nandan Nilekani, Former Chairman, UIDAI, said "Aadhaar was designed as a platform both for Government applications as well as innovative applications from diverse developers. The on-line authentication as well as the electronic KYC capability has the potential to put India at the forefront of service delivery transformation. I'm pleased to see an online hackathon by NASSCOM and AngelPrime that will help spread the opportunity to innovate on Aadhaar to the far corners of India and wish the event all success".

Aadhaar APIs such as Biometric Authentication, Biometric eKYC, Demographic Authentication, OTP Authentication and OTP eKYC will be exposed to all developers. Both Biometric Authentication and Biometric eKYC require approved biometric sensors for which the participants are free to procure their own devices (UIDAI approved). USB- based biometric sensors are being made available by Morpho with their SDK for Android and Windows at the cost of Rs.3000.

Khosla Labs will be partnering with AngelPrime for the Hackathon by opening up the APIs of its product - Aadhaar Bridge to enable the participants to integrate these Aadhaar services on their apps. Aadhaar Bridge provides for a developer friendly API along with SDK that supports multiple UIDAI certified biometric devices.

Developers can choose to participate from the comfort of their homes or can walk into any of the offline venues that will be announced on May 20, 2015. The Aadhaar Hackathon will be administered via the HackerEarth Sprint, a unique tool developed by HackerEarth for conducting large-scale online hackathons. All applications will be required to prove the successful use of the Aadhaar APIs and will be judged automatically for quality of code and sophistication of the application. A team of experts will judge the top 5 applications in each category and pick one winner from each category on 8th June.

Said Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, NASSCOM Product Council, "This initiative in collaboration with AngelPrime and NASSCOM driven by UIDAI, is a positive and important step towards utilizing technology for effective and scalable delivery of services. The Aadhaar Application Hackathon will enable a vibrant technology ecosystem that brings together key stakeholders to build on the identity infrastructure and create applications in areas like education, healthcare and payments. We are proud to be a part of this initiative and are hopeful that it will go a long way in evangelizing startups and driving an innovation ecosystem.”

Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner, AngelPrime, added, "It will be exciting to see applications being built on the Aadhaar platform. I have always believed that the architecture of Aadhaar makes it an enabler not just for benefits administration, but also fundamental infrastructure for the future of any and all services in the country. By administering the hackathon online, we are targeting getting participation from 10,000 developers and ensuring a wide range of applications.”

The Hackathon is backed by some of the biggest names in the technology industry, led by AngelPrime as the title sponsor. The event is also supported by NASSCOM’s 10,000 start-ups, Khosla Labs and Morpho.

Quick Snapshot   

Date: 6-7 June, 2015

Registrations to be done at : hck.re/aadhaar
Last date for procuring Biometric Sensors: 25 May 2015
Announcement of winners: 8th June 2015
Prizes: Total Prizes of up to 2 Lakh Rupees