Globally, the births of more than 50 million children – representing 40 per cent of the total births worldwide – go unregistered each year. Without formal registration, children are unable to access vital services. They are also more vulnerable to exploitation, violence and abuse. The importance of legal identity has also been recognized in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Simprints, an innovative technology company with a vision to build a sustainable yet profitable business, has developed a biometric fingerprint scanner and software package to allow some of the most vulnerable people in the world to access basic services such as healthcare and financial services.
Registered as a nonprofit, Simprints has so far attracted more than £1 million in seed funding. This includes funding from the private sector as well as from a range of institutional funders and foundations, including UKAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The company’s technology has been tested with over 120,000 fingerprints in the developing world and is currently being rolled out across Bangladesh and Nepal reaching 52,000 mothers and children in 2016. The company has also been recognized as part of UNICEF and TechCrunch’s “Best Tech: Changing Children’s Lives for Good Award.”
Simprints’ low-cost, rugged and durable fingerprint scanner has been uniquely designed with the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in mind. The device employs a curved sensor, which is more intuitive for individuals to make a ‘pinching’ gesture rather than to simply lay their finger flat on the surface of a reader. Design features such as this are imperative if the technology is to be taken up by a population that is not accustomed to using fingerprint scanners and touch screen phones.
Simprints has set itself the goal of producing their fingerprint scanner at scale for less than $50 per unit, making the technology affordable for developing country governments to adopt. Taken together, the opportunity of providing legal identity for underserved populations, the lack of a suitable fingerprint scanning technology, and the low cost of the product means that Simprints is set to benefit the lives of millions of people whilst maintaining a sustainable business model.
Simprints has been recognized by the Business Weekly as the “Startup of the Year.” The company is not alone either. Its small base in Cambridge, UK is rapidly transforming into a “Tech4Dev Hub” for social enterprises and startups with a purpose.
http://socialearth.org/simprints-changing-childrens-lives-with-technology