Khosla Labs to host Aadhaar Hackathon, wants to shape the future of digital identity

Khosla Labs was setup by Vinod Khosla and Srikanth Nadhamuni in 2012 as an innovation lab to focus on solving large scale problems driven by technology and entrepreneurial zeal. At a press meet yesterday, Vinod Khosla announced the the Aadhaar hackathon which is scheduled for 10th-11th January at the Khosla Labs office in Bangalore. The hackathon is aimed at creating awareness amongst developers about digital identity and how to build solutions on top of Aadhaar.

The hackathon will begin with a demonstration of building an Aadhaar verification app for Android, from start to finish. Post this, the participants are to build teams, ideate and start work on the apps. Khosla Labs will provide with necessary biometric devices for developers to build and test their application, for the duration of the hackathon. The event is being sponsored by UIDAI, Angel Prime & NASSCOM. At TechSparks this year, Nandan Nilekani also hinted towards the use of UIDAI for developers and how it can be leveraged to create solutions for the masses.

Technicla requirements for the hackathon:

The participants will be provided with-

• Biometric devices
• SDK for Android
• SDK for Windows Desktop
• Aadhaar Gateway SDK
• AUA / KUA services to access Aadhaar
• Shared internet connectivity

Participants will need to bring their own laptops for programming (pre-installed with the requisite software and libraries) along with OTG-enabled smartphone for testing (if developing an Android app). The developers need to ensure that the laptop has Java 1.7 SDK installed for using the Aadhaar Gateway SDK.

The winners of the Hacakthon will get a chance to connect with Khosla Labs, Aadhaar experts and take the idea to fruition along with getting free subscription for the Aadhaar connect. Khosla Labs also announced the partnership with Unitus Seed Fund to provide a platform for guiding and supporting startups interested in building Aadhaar-powered apps. For incubation, startups caan write to [email protected]. The intent is to incubate 4-6 startups.

The Aadhaar card program has been a roller coaster side with proponents and critics. From a developer's point of view, the existing documentation and details on the UIDAI development portal look dated but the developments such as the hackathon can bring in a breath of fresh air.

More information about the hackathon here.