Ajay Sinha, Digvijay Singh Kanwar, Ulf Ritsvall
Remember your first biometric experience?
Like most of us, you probably thought of enrolling your fingerprint in your smartphone. However, long before any technology becomes a commodity in your everyday devices – the true pioneers, the engineers, have of course already been there. Way ahead of all of us, knowing and preparing for what’s to come.
And in 1999, when biometrics with fingerprints was first introduced in India, Ajay Sinha, founder and owner of Access Computech Private Limited (ACPL) was indeed there, in the middle of what can now be looked back upon as a historical transition in many his bachelor’s in engineering from MSRIT Bangalore 1988 and several managerial positions, together with partner Ketan Upadhyay he had started ACPL in 1993.
The 90’s was a period of dramatical changes for India: the ground for what would soon be the country’s booming IT industry was now laid, as reforms made it easier for technology companies to establish themselves in India. Following the political turbulence of 1992, in 1993 the Bombay Stock Exchange saw a sharp rise with the Sensex index closing up approximately 88 %. A positive momentum, mainly driven by the banking and IT industries. Combined with social changes, a middle class with large enough pockets and appetite for shopping clothes, consumer electronics and building comfortable homes, grew as well.
“India is a very peculiar market”, states Mr. Sinha. “The citizens are highly IT and tech savvy and quick to adapt to new technology and tools.”
And the team members of ACPL were no exceptions, early adopters as they were. Starting with access and attendance control, the Indian startup was also soon becoming engaged in the payments segment.
The enrolment breakthrough
As tech savvy as it may be, India is also a country of contrasts. As much as the middle class was growing and shopping in the large cities; meanwhile in the rural and border areas, India’s education sector was also battling the effects of poverty, school dropouts and high levels of illiteracy among state school students, explains Mr Sinha. And it would be one of ACPL’s projects within this area that helped them make a name for themselves, placing ACPL once and for all on the biometric security map.
Looking back, Mr. Sinha notes a lot of lessons were learned during the five-six years this project went on.
“In total, we enrolled 18,000 schools and approximately 1.2 million students (young kids) during this project”, says Mr. Sinha. He adds the project was challenging: “enrolling five and six years olds is tricky as they have such tiny hands”, but ended up a success which received a lot of praise, even from the governmental level at that time. However, praises and kind words were never what drove the ACPL team efforts.
“Most of all, I believe this was a project that truly showcased what biometrics could contribute with on a large scale”, Mr. Sinha explains, pointing out that prior to the project, there had been serious problems with both students dropping out of school and so called “ghost students”, i.e. students that once register for school and then disappear. The school can still account for this student in its register; thus, it may also receive all sorts of financial aid and benefits which it shouldn’t.
“During this time, we also created software that could further help the schools follow up the student’s absence. Why is he absent and when?”.
Emphasising one can never get rid of all these problems of course, Mr. Sinha notes reducing the problem with even 10-15 percent, there are large savings to be made. Initially, not everyone was convinced about the perks and cost-efficiency of introducing biometrics though. Cost was an important – and challenging factor in India.
“In the beginning, prospects used to tell me that for the corresponding amount of money, they could have hired two full time security guards instead”, chuckles Mr. Sinha.
In 2024, the landscape looks nothing like it did back then. Production costs have decreased and even though cost will always be a key aspect, several other aspects must be taken into consideration today, such as managing logistics and securing volumes. Having the right partners is another crucial aspect, believes Mr. Sinha, emphasising the support during ACPL’s early years from his partner Mr. Upadhyay and long-term Taiwanese partner Startek Led by Dr W H Hsu.
Volumes needed – teaming up with NEXT
Celebrating over 30 years in business, the acquaintance with NEXT is a relatively new one. Ajay Sinha first encountered NEXT in conjunction with a demanding order. This was around 2017-2018 and as production costs had now started to come down, while the Indian Government had also launched the Make in India initiative – the demand for biometric solutions was increasing.
“We were involved in a large project where 250-300,000 devices needed to be deployed within two-three months. Back then, we could only cater to 200,000 and so that is how we first got in touch with NEXT and its local team here in India. Naturally, initially we looked at them as a competitor and the nature of the agreement was mostly technical.”
As of this writing, together, NEXT and ACPL have been involved in several successful product launches within India’s growing national and digital ID market, Aadhaar. Today, the relationship is warm, and the companies have entered an agreement where ACPL is using NEXT’s FAP20 sensors in ACPL’s biometric reader. Getting here though, has not been without its complications, notes Mr. Sinha. In the beginning he was not that serious about the technology, as he was not aware of NEXT’s Active Thermal technology or familiar with its characteristics.
“We had seen optical; we had seen capacitive. I was however not aware of this technology, so I was neither very interested nor very neutral, to be honest, because I just did not know much about it.”
What made him change his mind then? How come one of the most influential business leaders in India decided to take a chance on this relatively new biometric partner and its technology? Ironically, the turnaround and path towards warmer and strong relations started with a few problems.
“There had been a few incidents with some of the previous versions of their sensors, the earlier ones that they had in India”, explains Mr. Sinha.
“Since we had also shipped them to one of our big partners and this partner was not happy with the performance, we started to take a deeper look at the sensors ourselves to find out what was going wrong. That is how I started to study this specific sensor technology, Active Thermal.”
And he quickly learned new things about the technology that caught his interest.
“We realised that one of the most important features this sensor could have in the future is the liveness feature, i.e. a built-in anti-spoof feature. Compared with the liveness features of optical or capacitive sensors, most of it is created through software or algorithms, whereas here it can be incorporated during the manufacturing process inside the sensor itself. This was one of the fundamental basics we liked about Active Thermal. The second thing was it’s using glass, which is more cost-efficient compared to wafers. India is very price competitive, so these two factors really got us excited, and we started to look deeper into NEXT Biometrics.”
Mr. Sinha clarifies this is all water under the bridge now; stating that the local NEXT team back then were very keen to listen to the feedback and improve the product. After listening to ACPL, they continued to develop the sensor.
“The current version of the sensor, the FAP20, is now a fantastic product”, states Mr. Sinha, also noting that it is not only the technology know-how that has developed and matured. NEXT’s organisation has also undergone notable changes during the last couple of years.
“There is a different cohesiveness today. Everyone is focused on the same things and the direction is clearer. I am very fond of the team at NEXT and appreciate our close relations.”
Anti-spoofing and securing the core
Being solid partners today, Mr. Sinha and the team at NEXT continue to work hard to maintain their respective company’s innovation pace. The effects of getting a first mover advantage cannot and should not be underestimated in such a price competitive and rapidly moving industry.
Speaking of an ever-changing world, when asked if he is concerned about how biometrics will be affected when quantum computers, eventually, will break current encryption standards Mr. Sinha wishes to clarify that there are several common misconceptions around this area.
“It really is not, and never has been, about ‘hacking’ the biometric sensor itself”, he firmly states.
“Rather, it is about the data. And what we can do to ensure it remains safe, that is why it is so important to work on making the sensor’s anti-spoof capabilities as strong as possible. Yet again, this is where Active Thermal gets interesting as it can be built in the sensor itself, compared to the competing technologies.”
NEXT and ACPL are currently further developing the anti-spoof capabilities of Active Thermal. It is a cause close to both parties’ hearts, as both NEXT and ACPL are highly in demand on India’s Aadhaar market. Aadhaar is the national and digital ID system in India, introduced 14 years ago “it is used for pretty much everything in India”. However, to be allowed to provide one’s technology to Aadhaar, L1 certification is needed. Simply put, L1 is the latest level of security requirements within Aadhaar, and partners that are non-compliant with its requirements, are no longer accepted within this important ecosystem.
During the pandemic ACPL decided to put their extensive manufacturing experience to use and explore their opportunities more towards the banking and financial segments.
“We noted that these important segments are not that good in manufacturing themselves. Today, with the help of our partners, we have started to manufacture payment terminals locally here in India. The fingerprint modality is our bread and butter, so we try to develop new products where you can still use fingerprints as your preferred modality and enable more services.”
Africa and Open Source
An engineer, entrepreneur and pioneer at heart, Ajay Sinha is already prepared for what, or perhaps it is more relevant to talk about where the next development will take place.
“The next market segment which I expect we will see take off is Africa and Mosip. Mosip is an open-source standard. The biometric readers that we manufacture, featuring NEXT’s FAP20 sensor, are already Mosip qualified. Due to this, we are well prepared when this market will start to take off”, explains Mr. Sinha.
He adds most Chinese manufacturers are also targeting Mosip.
“Let’s say the coming two, three years will be a danger factor, but then I believe the Africa side will slowly pick up. And it is not just Africa, let’s not forget the Mosip is an open platform. Currently it is also being deployed in places such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other Asian countries. Mosip will be the next big thing in fingerprint and if we have the anti-spoof feature and cost perfectly balanced – every single device can have a fingerprint feature. Even your car, why not? If the spoof is taken care of completely, or at least rationally to an extent where you can say the chance is one in a million of being spoofed, great opportunities lie ahead.”
And according to Mr. Sinha, solving the anti-spoof feature should be financially rewarding, too.
“Despite a lot of drawbacks in fingerprint today, it is still one of the most prominent biometric modalities in the world. Looking at its popularity and useability, fingerprint as a modality will stay.”
His 30 years in business have however also taught him to remain vigilant. Nothing is taken for granted. Mistakes will always happen but should not be repeated. It is not possible to foresee all of them, but Mr. Sinha believes the key to sound decisions and actions lies in balancing the soft values with the hard facts.
“You may have all the processes in place, all the paperwork done. Still: you make losses. Now, this can happen because as humans, we sometimes tend to believe more in paperwork and processes than our own beliefs. And sometimes we are biassed in our beliefs and neglect the paperwork and processes. Identifying and balancing these two aspects is really what succeeding in our industry is all about.”