Carol Bartz, CEO, Yahoo!
SINGAPORE, 12 NOVEMBER 2009 - On her first visit to India after becoming the CEO of Internet company Yahoo, Carol Bartz said she showed interest in India’s Unique Identity (UID) project, reported MSN India.
Headed by former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, the project will assign every Indian citizen with a unique identification number that will identify him or her.
Bartz met India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Nilekani in New Delhi and is reported to have discussed the matter with him.
“It was primarily a courtesy meeting where we also did inquire if Yahoo could be of any help in the area of cloud technologies. We are in the business of managing data. We process around 500 billion e-mails every month, so we wondered if we could assist in the area of managing the databases as India tries to implement the Unique Identity (UID) project,” Bartz told the media in Delhi.
A report in Silicon India added that Yahoo wants to do the project on a non-commercial basis. “She [Bartz] also mentioned that there's no commercial interest in the deal and Yahoo would help to power the project on a non-profit basis,” the paper noted. “Bartz added that Yahoo should be the optimal choice because it has a major presence in India. The company claims that three out of four Indians access the Internet through Yahoo.”
Microsoft, IBM also interested
According to a report in Silicon India, Microsoft is also interested in the project.
“Earlier this year, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates expressed a strong interest in participating in the project, meeting Nilekani and assuring him that Microsoft would be able to assign the IDs swiftly,” the report says.
It's unclear if Microsoft has the same 'non-profit' stance as Yahoo, says the paper. “It looks like IBM is also throwing its hat into the ring as well, so it should be interesting to see which tech giant wins out”.
