This Hyderabad-based startup is behind the airport walk-in app DigiYatra

DigiYatra, a contactless facial recognition-based aircraft boarding system in use at Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports, has been developed by Hyderabad-based startup Dataevolve Solutions, the civil aviation ministry has told Parliament.

Responding to a question, minister of state for civil aviation Gen (retd) VK Singh said that Dataevolve Solutions was selected through the national start-up challenge conducted by Niti Aayoog under the Atal Innovation Mission.

DigiYatra is being heralded by the government as the future of air travel, as it provides touchless passenger validation through facial recognition, which saves time at various touchpoints like entry to the airport, security hold area and boarding area with no intervention form security personnel.

Dataevolve is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner, which helped migrate the workload of three Telangana government departments— Aarogyasri Health Care Trust, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and the IT department—to AWS. It is also working with Andhra Pradesh and has designed its current e-challan system, its website says.

Singh also told Parliament that DigiYatra is also set to be introduced at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad airports by March 2023.

Earlier, civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had said that passenger data for Digi Yatra would be saved in an encrypted format in a decentralised manner.  On February 2, Singh reiterated it and said the data would be stored in a person's wallet and only be shared for a limited time with the destination airport for 24 hours.

Last year, NITI Aayog, the government's think tank, urged the Centre to clarify how information gathered by Digi Yatra would be handled.

It also suggested the government to adopt a facial recognition model that is free of bias, as it may result in incorrect decisions and ultimately exclusion from access.

Digi Yatra has been brought at a time when concerns have been raised about the use of facial recognition technology, particularly with regard to privacy, surveillance, discrimination, and digital divide.

It has often been pointed out that the country still lacks a data protection law to protect against the misuse of sensitive data such as biometrics.