Headquartered in France, IDEMIA is a global enabler in Identity technologies that ensures privacy and trust and guarantees secure, authenticated and verifiable transaction. The company is enabling digital transformation with the help of its innovations in the Augmented Identity space.
A far as its Indian operation is concerned, IDEMIA has a big presence here with 5000+ team strength. Its manufacturing plant in Noida is one of the largest telecom, payment card manufacturing unit in the world.
Peeyush Jain, VP terminal Business, IDEMIA speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the company’s current strategy, how it is driving innovation and it future plans.
Please share details about IDEMIA’s key priorities that you have today in the market?
IDEMIA is a global leader in Identity technologies, headquartered in France. An identity that ensures privacy and trust and guarantees secure, authenticated and verifiable transaction that’s augmented Identity and IDEMIA is a global leader in augmented identity. We today live in a world where identity is core to any transaction we make in physical or digital world.
It can be pay, travel, communicate, vote or access private or public space. Given the vast range of environments and usages, securing our identity has become vital in the world we live in today. IDEMIA’s ambition is to provide an identity to any individual on the planet and to secure it. However, we recognize that even the strictest security measures are useless if they are complicated to use. They must then be convenient and user-friendly – rooted in what is intrinsic to us, in who we are through biometrics.
When biometrics is the base of your identification and authentication. It’s the easiest as there are no passwords to be remembered, no one can steal your identity as with biometrics only you can be one. only with biometrics “ONLY YOU CAN BE YOU”, Hence it’s the safest and most convenient. With close to 15,000 employees around the world, IDEMIA serves clients in 180 countries.
IDEMIA enjoys a big presence in India with 5000+ team strength. Our state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Noida is one of the largest telecom and payment card manufacturing unit in the world. We also have factory in Noida to manufacture small biometric devices, which goes into the Aadhaar ecosystem or banking ecosystem. We also manufacture OEM modules the high end 3D sensors, which are used for integrating into multiple vendor devices.
We recognize the innovation and technology resource power of India and hence India is a base of Global R&D and Digital Platforms, which cater to innovative and cutting edge identity solutions in India and across the globe. Over the last 25 years in the country, IDEMIA has powered many mission critical and digital transformation projects in partnership with the Government and other leading players in the private sector.
How has your company’s facial biometric technology advanced over the past couple of years?
Our way of living has been drastically impacted during the last few months, creating completely new requirements for a contactless approach when it comes to accessing public or private spaces. Our contactless devices for access control answer these new requirements by offering both a hygienic and frictionless experience to users.
VisionPass, the ultimate face recognition device for physical access and time & attendance control, was introduced earlier this year and extends IDEMIA’s range of contactless devices for access control. VisionPass offers a unique experience: being identified on-the-move in less than 1 second thanks to powerful algorithms. For more user comfort, VisionPass works in all light conditions from complete darkness to bright sunlight, with all face types and with various vertical and horizontal angles to cope with users of different heights (1.20- 2.00 meters / 3ft 11” – 6ft 6”). And as VisionPass was designed for access control and security, it can counter spoofing attempts by image, video or 3D masks. VisionPass combines a stateof-the-art optical set of 2D/3D/ infrared cameras with IDEMIA’s latest advances in AI and image processing, enabling a high level of security and real user convenience.
Our award-winning MorphoWave™ technology has become the benchmark in frictionless access, securing high traffic access points in the world’s largest financial institutions, critical infrastructure facilities, universities and healthcare organizations. IDEMIA’s MorphoWave™ contactless fingerprint solution scans and verifies 4 fingerprints in less than 1 second, through a fully touchless hand wave gesture. Thanks to the simplicity of this gesture, the throughput can reach up to 50 people per minute. It’s a unique technology that we patented and which is still unique in the market, despite we launched that five years ago. Already integrated with more than 25 of the industry’s leading access control systems, MorphoWave™ technology has become the benchmark in frictionless access. These advanced biometric readers secure high traffic access points in the world’s largest financial institutions, critical infrastructure facilities, universities and healthcare organizations.
How does biometric technology ensures security and ensure that piracy doesn’t happen?
We at IDEMIA have strengthened our terminals to be to be GDPR compliant from a hardware point of view, and also from a process point of view. Our terminals are built around the cybersecurity aspects, so that you can’t enter into the terminal steal the biometric templates, as we call that, which is your biometric information, which is computed into a certificate. So to say, it’s not, it’s never the full image of your face, which is in the terminal or image of your fingerprints. It’s always a computed aspect of it. So if someone would be able to open the terminal, he would not be able to get anything, no picture of employees, nothing like that, of course, it’s fully anonymized. And then we also have a way to work in combination with the access badge. Because you know, when we arrive in companies to sell biometrics, usually they have already in an employee badge, access control, a contactless badge.
What kind of innovations can we expect from IDEMIA in the coming months?
2020 was already quite busy for us, we introduced Vision Pass, a very ambitious facial recognition terminal, that has had tremendous success,. We have also launched a new biometric tablet last year. So this year, we will add a new functionality in those two products, we added the mask support and mask detection, as I mentioned, we’ll be also working on the tablet improvements. There are some new products launch lined up towards the end of this year and early next year. So we’ve got a quite nice roadmap coming in the next at least 18 months in terms of products. It’s really building and strengthening the family of products that we offer to the market.
As a Vertical how do you look at the telecom space today?
We’re on the cusp of a new revolution: 5G and all the new use case promises that it brings. IDEMIA offers in the fields of 5G and M2M/IoT connectivity driven by enhanced mobile broadband, massive IoT and critical communication requirements. We design tools to link strong authentication with secure elements and service platforms to guarantee connectivity and service access to end-users while promoting sustainable practices.
We believe by 2025 smartphones will account for 79% of mobile connections excluding cellular IoT – and for good reason. These mobile devices put an incredible amount of information in the palm of our hands: our schedules, banking details, emails, and anything else we might need. While technology responds to new connectivity challenges and opportunities – particularly with the deployment of 5G and the growing IoT market – heightened protection of our digital identities is needed more than ever. As a leading player in the telecom field, IDEMIA is at the forefront of the digital revolution and we are committed to bringing protected and convenient experiences to our mobile operator customers.
We designed tools to link strong authentication with secure elements and service platforms to guarantee simple connectivity and service access to end-users anywhere, anytime. The deployment of SIM cards is crucial for mobile operators to obtain an entry point to critical mobile value-added services. We also assist our clients through the disruptive management of subscriptions through dedicated platforms as well as embedded or removable SIM cards and optimized chips.
What kind of partners and customers are you working with for the contactless biometric devices? Can you share any names or verticals that you are specifically operating?
Verticals such as oil and gas, education, hospitality, e-commerce, or the government, defense are playing very well. We work with large partners, the integrators like SPS, Honeywell, Siemens or Bosch across markets.
What is your channel strategy specifically for India?
We have a very clean channel strategy for the biometric devices like Morpho wave Compact and vision Pass. We are OEM suppliers, we don’t directly interact with the customer, we are there to support a partner in terms of demonstration, POC, or any support required by their team in India and across regions. Our product and services excellence relies, in large part, on us working together with highly skilled, agile and creative partners, which provide complementary products and services that augments our offerings.
Together, we create value, expand our businesses, innovate and most importantly better serve our customers. Our ultimate goal is for our suppliers and partners to succeed with us in the fascinating world of Augmented Identity. We have also been successful in building up long-term partnerships with academic institutions, universities, scientific institutions and high tech firms to explore latest research, imagine innovative use cases and accelerate the go-to-market of new technologies. Given the advanced technologies involved in our product and service offerings and their rapid pace of evolution, this network of world-class experts allows us to deepen our capabilities in cutting edge technologies.
What kind of investments have you made in the India so far? And what can we expect? What are your plans?
We have built one of the world’s largest manufacturing base in India, we service more than 300 clients from here and we have invested in building IDEMIA’s Tower that is 11 floors of dedicated space for IDEMIA. So you can imagine the quantum of investment we run more than 300 RTOs. Across India, we are we run around third, more than 30 OR centers, so we are heavily invested in India.
