IT training cos vie for UID deal

NEW DELHI: The announcement by Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI) of a large IT and biometrics training tender to train over 1 lakh enrolling agents on Wednesday has thrown up new opportunities for large training companies like NIIT, Aptech and Jetking, spread across the country.

The UIDAI plans to train about 1.04 lakh agents and will need about 430 centres across major capitals in the country over the next four years. “Let us assume that we have to complete the enrolment of 100% of our residents (about 1.2 billion) in a period of four years. We will have to train about 10,000 and 31,000 staff members over next two years,” said Devender Kumar, deputy director general at UIDAI. Each enrollment centre would have to complete at least 60 enrollments to complete the massive target of enrolling 1.2 billion people by 2014-15.

India’s largest IT training company NIIT is already is making plans to bid for the project. “The Unique ID project is in the strategic interest of the nation. We would be pleased to partnering with UIDAI in the field of IT training,” an NIIT official said. Second largest IT training company Aptech CEO Ninad Karpe said that his company would bid for both testing and training components of the project. But Aptech will chose only that component for which the value is higher.

According to the EoI, a company can’t execute both components due to conflict of interest. UIDAI will also require about 220 testing centres for its solutions over next four years.