e-governance firm MGRM Net has entered into a JV with Dutch identity solutions provider Dell ID to tap the Indian market. Both companies will jointly invest Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 750 crore each) in the first phase into the JV that will aims to work to work with other technology partners and provide backend support for projects such as the Unique ID one headed by the co-Founder and vice-chairman of Infosys Technologies Nandan Nikelani.

Both partners said that they would commit additional investments into the JV to target the emerging space of identity management in India, which is expected to generate business worth several billions of dollars over the next couple of years. The MGRM-Bell ID JV will become operational in the next quarter even as an operational team is expected to begin work as early as next month.

MGRM Net is the Indian subsidiary of the US-based MGRM group. It is also one of India’s largest E-governance firms and is currently executing a slew of projects for leading educational institutes, pharmaceutical companies and insurance players here. It is also handling several e-governance projects for several state governments and central ministries in India. For instance, the company runs the back-end platform for the health ministry for codifying and classifying all the drugs. On the other hand, Bell ID is the global leader in the field of smart card management and boasts of one of the largest teams in the world dedicated exclusively to developing software that manages the life-cycles of cards and their associated applications and cryptographic keys.
The Dutch-based company manages over 125 million cards in different applications in all continents including handling over 100,000 corporate identities for Boeing in the US and executing the national ID for citizens in Macau & Qatar.

“This JV synergisies the unique strengths of both MGRM & Bell ID. Bell ID has experience in managing an unrivalled portfolio of international customers in many key markets while MGRM is the first in the world to offer research based integrated e-governance platforms.” Dr K V R Murthy, founder of MGRM Net said.