Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Launches ¡®Made For India¡¯ Skype Lite App With Aadhaar Plugin

There¡¯s no dearth of communication apps in our lives, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella thinks Skype Lite deserves our attention. Made for India¡¯s connectivity climate, Skype Lite works to deliver the best of Skype under the most challenging network conditions.

Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO at Future Decoded Event in Mumbai

Skype Lite from Microsoft now supports Aadhaar identity confirmation, too, with support for seven regional Indian languages: Gujarati, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, made the global announcement at the company¡¯s ¡®Future Decoded¡¯ event in Mumbai earlier today.

According to Mr Nadella, Skype Lite will boast all the features sported by the full-fledged Skype app. But it will have some local features baked in specifically for the Indian audience and connectivity conditions. The Skype Lite App, for instance, will be able to work pretty well on even 2G networks, allowing people to place voice-over-internet calls, exchange written messages and call phone numbers (at a fixed cost). Skype Lite also comes with inbuilt bots to answer some of your questions quickly.

Skype Lite will also have Aadhaar integrated within, allowing people to authenticate identities of people on the other end of the call, in certain scenarios -- for example, if an interviewer wants to quickly establish if the interviewee on the other end is actually who they claim to be. After successful Aadhaar authentication, all personally identifiable data is wiped off the handsets immediately after the call is ended.

While Skype Lite is only available on the Android platform, for now, the Aadhaar integration is scheduled to turn live in the Microsoft communication app by June 2017.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (L) and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis (R) Shaking Hands In Mumbai

Of course, all this is well and good but the million dollar question remains -- will Skype Lite carve out a niche and demand a loyal fan base in a market dominated by Whatsapp, Hike, Line and Facebook Messenger?