Amitesh Kumar Sinha appointed new CEO of India Semiconductor Mission
This comes at a crucial phase as government is readying to launch the second phase of the India Semiconductor Mission.
Sinha was appointed as Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), Bengaluru Division of South Western Railway, on January 1 earlier this year. Sinha, an officer of the 1996 Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS) batch, is a BE graduate of civil engineering from Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering (VRCE), Nagpur.
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Time of India
5 hours ago
- Time of India
UIDAI is working on simplifying offline Aadhaar for citizen KYC
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which manages the Aadhaar database, is working to strengthen the offline identity verification service for citizens, with an aim to make it further secure and user-friendly and encourage more financial services players to adopt it, two senior bankers in the know is seeking to strengthen and regulate the process to allow citizens to complete the Aadhaar-based customer identification, or know-your-customer, process of service providers without disclosing their Aadhaar number or personal details, they said. The current methods of electronic, biometric and offline KYC require the customer to share the Aadhaar number or be present in person at the service provider for KYC processes at many fintech firms and non-banking lenders were affected in June when the UIDAI and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) blocked the websites of multiple startups for alleged unauthorised access to the Aadhaar database. Even food delivery and ecommerce startups, which used Aadhaar for the verification of gig workers and blue-collar employees, faced disruption in their onboarding process.'There have been multiple rounds of conversations, and UIDAI has made it very clear that consumers will be able to use offline Aadhaar-based KYC without any need to share their Aadhaar number or personal details,' said one of the bankers. The government-backed authority has also clarified that the verification should be done strictly with consent from the communications have happened between UIDAI and authorised agents: Aadhaar Authentication Agencies and KYC User Agencies. ET reported on July 7 that startups facing disruptions in their onboarding services were evaluating writing to Meity for explicit permission to access the Aadhaar did not respond to ET's request for a bid to make this verification process more popular, UIDAI will promote QR codes and PDF files beyond the original XML data that customers currently need to download from the UIDAI website for offline KYC, the second banker said. This is expected to make it easier for customers to manage these documents and complete their KYC more the authority has specified that offline Aadhaar-based KYC can be completed without any biometric authentication or one-time password (OTP). With more clarity, there is now an expectation that more banks and financial services companies will start using offline Aadhaar KYC for their customer verification, the second banker said. 'Startups can act as service providers on top of authorised agencies like Protean e-Gov and NPCI,' he National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) offers a platform called eKYC-Setu, which provides electronic KYC services. While this service initially started with banks, in March, NPCI informed its network participants that companies regulated by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority and the Securities and Exchange Board of India can also start using this service.E-KYC using an OTP was one of three mechanisms that the UIDAI enabled for regulated entities after the Supreme Court in September 2018 restricted private companies' access to the Aadhaar database. It involves sharing the Aadhaar number and pinging the UIDAI database for verification, a process typically followed by banks, insurance companies and other two were biometric-based, which requires the customer's physical presence, and the offline method where the customer shares an XML file that could be decoded and used for verification.'The problem was with the offline method, where many startups were providing this verification service through unauthorised means. UIDAI is coming down hard on players who are offering non-compliant offline KYC flows,' said the founder of an identity verification of identity verification startups that offer these services are exploring opportunities to become service providers on top of the regulated authentication agencies, so they can continue providing this service in a compliant Kothari, chief executive of Zoop, a Pune-based identity verification startup, told ET that there are alternative KYC solutions available, such as NPCI's eKYC-Setu, Sub-AUAs, and the government partner programme. His company facilitates these technology solutions through partnerships.'We presented our position to the appropriate government committee, including Meity, and after due verification, our website was restored within two weeks,' Kothari said regarding the government action in June when Zoop's website was partially blocked by the government. Other startups that faced similar action at that time included Signzy, Digitap and Surepass.
Time of India
14 hours ago
- Time of India
Free AI training to 5.5 lakh village entrepreneurs soon, says Ashwini Vaishnaw
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel NEW DELHI: Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways, Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) Railways, and Information & Broadcasting (I&B), Wednesday said that the government will impart free training on Artificial Intelligence AI ) to nearly 5.5 lakh village-level entrepreneurs (VLE)."All of you (VLEs) will be given AI training for free. We have set a target under the IndiaAI Mission to skill around 10 lakh people. All 5.5 lakh VLEs will be given preference in that training," the minister was speaking at the 16th foundation day of the Common Service Centre (CSC) in minister further said that village entrepreneurs are present in nearly 90% of villages in the country, providing essential government-driven and other digital March last year, the Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the IndiaAI Mission with a budgetary outlay of ?10,371.92-crore to catalyse AI innovation in the country. It seeks to democratise access to computing infrastructure, improve data quality, develop indigenous AI capabilities, and attract top AI talent, among May this year, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) said that India's national compute capacity has surpassed 34,000 GPUs, which will provide a common computational AI platform for training and inference, crucial to develop indigenous foundational models and AI solutions tailored to the domestic senior minister also said he would personally discuss with state chief ministers to merge various state-level CSCs to provide unified and integrated Minister of State for Electronics and IT Jitin Prasada said that there was a demand from CSC VLEs for merging state-based government services centres with CSC that could offer a higher income generation opportunity to Kumar Rakesh, Managing Director, CSC separately said that the creation of an AI training program is underway, and the initiative would be kicked off within this fiscal Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) was established in 2006 under MeitY, with the vision to deliver digital services to the last mile, and to create a robust ICT-based network across CSC is managed by a VLE, a local resident who earns by offering a host of government-to-citizen (G2C) nearly 2.5 lakhs gram panchayats (village blocks) covering more than 5.5 villages have a CSC.
Time of India
17 hours ago
- Time of India
5.5 lakh village-level entrepreneurs to be trained on AI: Ashwini Vaishnaw
NEW DELHI: Ashwini Vaishnaw , Minister of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) and Railways and Information & Broadcasting (I&B), said that the government will impart training on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for free to nearly 5.5 lakh village-level entrepreneurs (VLE). Vaishnaw was speaking at the 16th foundation day of the Common Service Centre (CSC) on Wednesday. The minister said VLEs, today, are present in nearly 90% of villages in the country, providing essential government-driven and other digital services. 'Under our AI mission, the government has decided to equip 10 lakh people with AI skills. Of this, we will give priority to and train 5.5 lakh VLEs,' Vaishnaw said, urging more village-level entrepreneurs to join the training programme. Last year in March, the Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the IndiaAI Mission with a budgetary outlay of ₹10,371.92-crore to catalyse AI innovation in the country. It seeks to democratise access to computing infrastructure, improve data quality, develop indigenous AI capabilities, and attract top AI talent, among others. This May, the IT Ministry said that India's national compute capacity has surpassed 34,000 GPUs, which will provide a common computational AI platform for training and inference, crucial to develop indigenous foundational models and AI solutions tailored to the domestic context. The minister said he will personally discuss with the chief ministers of states to merge various state-level CSCs to provide unified, integrated services. 'I will personally talk to the chief ministers and urge for a unified and integrated service, which will also benefit the country.' CSC Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) was established in 2006 under MeitY, with the vision to deliver digital services to the last mile and to create a robust ICT-based network across India. Each CSC is managed by a VLE, a local resident who serves as the digital and service bridge between the government and citizens. These centres provide a wide range of essential services, including Aadhaar enrollment and update, PAN card processing, passport applications, banking and insurance services, and others. CSCs also support students with exam registrations, scholarship applications, and online courses.
