What happens when three IITians are committed to make Aadhaar accessible to all

The mission

At a time when most of their batch mates were pursuing big dreams on foreign shores, three friends quit their jobs and returned to India on a mission to make Aadhaar accessible to the common man. For Alankar Saxena, Gaurav Chauhan and Aakash N. S. who were classmates at IIT Bombay, the motivation came when they read ‘Rebooting India’ by Nandan Nilekani, former chairman and visionary of the UIDAI. Convinced that the Aadhaar project had the potential to transform India, they decided to build an app to help the UIDAI with their vision of empowering every Indian with a unique identity. The official UIDAI website at the time was not only unreliable but also unusable on mobile. This made them realise the need for an app that was user-friendly and provided a digital platform for all Aadhaar related responsibilities.

Even after graduating from college their paths crossed when Alankar and Aakash both worked at Twitter in Ireland, and San Francisco on Ads, Timeline Recommendations and Data pipelines.  At the time, Gaurav was with Mylikes and FriendLife in San Francisco. Alankar and Gaurav lived together in San Francisco and also worked at mobile analytics start-up Rocq.io and online educational platform Bodhitree. The three had always fostered the dream of working on a start-up after gaining some industry experience and this seemed like a good objective to pursue.

The app

Two years back on 2^nd Jan 2015, when they released the first version of the app with basic features, little did they know that it would garner 200+ downloads a day right at the outset. After adding a few more essential features gradually, they saw daily downloads shoot up to 20,000 on a lucky day.

At 1 million downloads today, the app is a one-stop solution for all Indians to manage their Aadhaar and Aadhaar related information on their smartphones. Some of the functionalities that the app allows their users to carry out are:

• Find their Aadhaar number (or Aadhaar enrolment number) using their mobile number.
• Download Aadhaar card in PDF format by providing basic details like Aadhaar number, Full Name and PIN code, using their mobile number.
• Submit corrections in the Aadhaar card (name, date of birth, address etc.) by uploading supporting documents.
• Keep Aadhaar information up-to-date (change in address, email ID or mobile number).
• Link their Aadhaar card with their LPG connection, and check the status.
• Store and share their family’s Aadhaar cards in a few simple clicks.
• Go paperless by sharing the Aadhaar card by email or WhatsApp instead of taking printouts wherever a proof of ID or address is required (e.g. for bank account opening).
• Locate a nearby enrolment center to enrol for Aadhaar, submit biometric information, or update registered mobile number.

They have observed that users are not only actively using the app for their own Aadhaar but are also coming back regularly to view and share their family’s Aadhaar cards.

The road ahead

The app uses basic functionalities from the Aadhaar official website to perform all actions. This initially made their app slightly unreliable because the website itself was highly undependable. But to avoid too much reliance on the Aadhaar website, they have now employed strategies such as saving the user’s data locally and automatically hitting the website in the background whenever possible.

Going forward, they plan to introduce new features that will allow their users to go digital in other aspects of their lives. They are exploring the option of making the Aadhaar Portal a Digital Locker for storing all of the user’s important documents like PAN card, Driving License, Voter ID Card etc. Another option to transfer funds and pay using the bank account linked with Aadhaar is a feature they are planning to incorporate. With the recent demonetization and launch of Unified Payments Interface, this certainly bodes well. The magnitude to which a user can achieve multiple purposes using a single app is promising.

Website | App page