Nasscom and UIDAI to empower DeepTech startups in digital identity innovation

Nasscom has entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to expand opportunities for India’s DeepTech innovators and strengthen the country’s digital identity ecosystem. The partnership aims to open new pathways for startups in the IDTech space to imagine, experiment, and build solutions that can power the backbone of India’s digital identity infrastructure.

As part of the collaboration, Nasscom will support UIDAI’s Scheme for Innovation and Technology Association with Aadhaar (SITAA) – a structured UIDAI initiative to catalyze open innovation, indigenization and scalable ID-tech solutions that strengthen the Aadhaar ecosystem and India’s Digital Public Infrastructure. The initiative aims to strengthen India’s digital identity ecosystem by fostering innovation, promoting indigenization, and enabling collaborative development in the identity technology domain.

India is home to more than 4000 DeepTech startups, including over 500 inventive ventures tackling challenges in healthtech, agriculture, space, and other strategic sectors. Nasscom has been closely working with the ecosystem and government in evangelizing the promise of DeepTech startups, spotlighting their ideas, and enabling them to scale globally. The collaboration with UIDAI reinforces this mission by shaping a national narrative around IDTech, a domain poised to transform service delivery, enhance trust in digital interactions, and unlock inclusive growth for millions of citizens.

For startups, the partnership opens doors to UIDAI’s incubation sandbox, providing a platform to pilot solutions in policy-linked environments, gain visibility with influential stakeholders, and engage with real-world challenges central to India’s digital future. Through curated showcases, academia outreach, and structured exchanges with UIDAI, the initiative will help founders validate their ideas, build credibility, and accelerate their journey to scale.

Speaking on the occasion, Sangeeta Gupta, Sr. Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Nasscom, said: “The future of digital identity will be shaped by groundbreaking ideas and solutions that redefine what trust means in the digital age. With the convergence of AI, biometrics, and secure platforms, there is immense potential to make citizen services more accessible, reliable, and citizen centric. This collaboration with UIDAI allows startups to not only innovate but also to impact how technology can empower governance with transparency and trust at its foundation.”

This underscores the growing role of technology in building trust, transparency, and accessibility in governance. By embedding innovation into India’s digital identity framework, the collaboration seeks to ensure that every new idea is not just a technological breakthrough, but also a step towards empowering citizens, strengthening inclusion, and making services more reliable.