UID Initiative
Building Institutions through Identity: The Entrepreneurial,
Financial and Socioeconomic Promise of the UID.
The UID initiative (Aadhaar) will roll out across the country over the
next couple of years, providing hundreds of millions of Indians with
economic and financial inclusion, creating numerous innovative
commercial opportunities, strengthening the country’s institutions, and
leading to an explosion of entrepreneurial activity that leverages this
nationwide platform. This plenary panel will provide insight into the
evolution of the Aadhaar initiative, analyze how it will impact,
integrate with and enhance India's existing business, financial and
telecommunications infrastructure, debate the socioeconomic potential of
the project, and discuss related business and entrepreneurial
opportunities/challenges.
The panellists –K C Chakravarty of the RBI, S Sivakumar of
ITC, Sanjay Swamy of the UIDAI and Abhishek Sinha of Eko
Financial Services – bring varied entrepreneurial, corporate and
regulatory perspectives to the discussion. Their diverse and deep
expertise from banking, financial services, mobile services and rural
commerce promises to combine to provide an especially informative debate
and vibrant dialogue about Aadhaar’s immense business and socioeconomic
potential. The panel will also feature remarks from Nandan Nilekani
via video stream, the introduction of ISB’s Identity Initiative from
Dean Ajit Rangnekar, and UID research perspectives from Professor
Ravi Bapna (University of Minnesota) and Professor Arun
Sundararajan (New York University) who will moderate the discussion.
Brief profiles of the panellists:
Dr K C Chakrabarty is Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of
India, a position he assumed in 2009 following his role as Chairman of
Punjab National Bank from 2007-2009 and Chairman of Indian Bank from
2005-2007. He has over 30 years of experience in the Indian banking
sector and is one of the nation's pre-eminent thinkers on financial
inclusion. Over his career, Chakrabarty has provided pioneering
leadership and guidance on banking technologies, payment and settlement
systems and credit for rehabilitation for a range of national institutes
and organizations.
S Sivakumar is the Chief Executive of ITC Agri Businesses. He is
best known for his role in creating the path-breaking ITC's eChoupal, a
platform that has empowered millions of farmers across over 40,000
villages, is considered the benchmark for rural IT-enabled
transformation and whose story has been one of Harvard Business School's
most popular case studies for the last 5 years. He is widely regarded as
one of the world's experts in rural commerce. Sivakumar also serves on a
variety of corporate boards and executive committee boards including
that of the National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange.
Sanjay Swamy heads mobile authentication and financial strategy
for the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), where he
facilitates the future use of the UID for banking and telecom in the
private sector. He is also founder and chairman of ZipDial, a mobile
platform for marketing and CRM. Prior to joining the UIDAI, Swamy was
the founder and CEO of mChek, a mobile payment platform, and was honored
as 2009’s voice & data technology innovator of the year.
Abhishek Sinha is founder and CEO of Eko Financial Services, a
leader in the provision of banking and financial services in rural and
financially disenfranchised urban areas, and recently profiled as a
pioneering innovator by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. Prior to
Eko, Sinha was founder of 6d Telecom Services, a startup he expanded to
span nine countries, during which time he won the 2006 TiE-Canaan
Entrepreneur of the Year award.