Both partners said 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 the Indian's largest E-governance firm 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 insurance, 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-cycle of cards and their associated applications and cryptographic keys.

The 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. KVR Murthy, founder of MGRM Net told ET.

Asked if JV would complete against software majors like Infosys, TCS and others for the Unique ID project, the MGRM group chairman for JVs Ashwani Windlass said these IT companies were only bidding to execute the project.

"We are in a different space, which is to provide the back-end and the platform for such projects. So our business case does not depend on who wins these major projects in India," Mr Windlass added.

According to the chairman of Bell ID, Pat B Curran, India offered exciting prospects in this emerging space. "The MGRM-Bell ID venture will explore 'smart card related opportunities' secured by biometric applications based on domain research and integrate them with MGRM's OmVcard capability," he added.