'Aadhaar is $1.3 billion ill spent': Hotmail's Sabeer Bhatia says it could have been built in $20 million

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia made the comment during his recent appearance on a podcast hosted by Prakhar Gupta. (Image credit: Prakhar Ke Pravachan)

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia believes that spending $1.3 billion on building Aadhaar was unnecessary especially because the data it collected in the form of biometrics was not being used at all. The entrepreneur said that the whole unique identity project could have been wrapped up in $20 million.

Bhatia made the comment during his recent appearance on Prakhar Ke Pravachan, a podcast hosted by Prakhar Gupta. "Aadhaar is like $1.3 billion ill spent," he said. "Because Aadhaar took all of your biometrics, where is that being used? A better way to solve the problem of unique identity would be a video and voice printing technology. Simple. Which every smartphone user has. You can build it in under $20 million."

He further said, without taking names, "whoever did this is not a technologist". "They don't know technology. They have never coded in their lives. That's why this problem exists."

Elaborating further on how costs could have been cut with the unique identity project, Bhatia said collecting voiceprints of individuals could have been stored in a database and be the unique identifier that can also be used at airports. "At the airport, the moment somebody walked in, with the videos of the people walking in, the guys [security personnel] would not even have to check your card," he said.

When asked if he would be concerned about upsetting the brains behind Aadhaar, Bhatia said that while it is not his intention to anger anyone but he would "humbly" like to state that they should "use their brains". "This is ill money ill spent. $1.3 billion! Are you kidding me?" he concluded.