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MindTree team leads race to win UID biometric deal
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 14 July 2010, 14:46 IST |
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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 project.
The MindTree team, which includes biometric providers Daon of Ireland and Lithuania's Nueurotechnologia, pitched the lowest at 2.75 a biometric authentication. MindTree's bid is set to help it beat out at least eight companies such as TCS, the country's largest software services exporter, Hewlett Packard, Mahindra Satyam and Unisys Corp, which were fancying their chances of winning UIDAI's largest contract yet. The earlier one, an applications development contract worth 30 crore, too was awarded to MindTree.
Mahindra Satyam partnered France's Morpho to bid 8.76 a transaction while HP, U.S. based L1 ID Solutions and India's 4GID together bid 9.75. Cogent Systems of the U.S. allied with France's Steria to bid 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.
MindTree CEO Ashok Soota declined to talk about the bid. "If you have got to know of my win, you can congratulate me," he said. If MindTree lands the contract, the development will be as much about a $272-million company trumping a $6.4-billion giant like TCS as about the latter's debarment for a second time. TCS declined comment, but other bidders that lost out and companies that stayed away have raised concerns about the conditions in the tender documents issued by UIDAI.
The tender had strict clauses, including putting in place a team within 15 days, and unlimited liability on the vendor in case costs escalate, due to which his company stayed away, said an e-governance head of a large IT services company. Daon, which also teamed with a consortium led by Unisys, bid about 11.75.
"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," according to an e-governance official of another large company.