The Unique Identification Authority of India, in collaboration with International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, has successfully concluded its Biometric SDK Benchmarking Challenges for face and iris recognition technologies and announced the top-performing participants.

The initiative follows the success of UIDAI's earlier fingerprint benchmarking challenge and forms part of its broader effort to promote biometric research and support the development of advanced biometric software solutions.

Conducted between December 2025 and February 2026, the Face and Iris Age Variance Challenges attracted 531 registrations from technology providers and research institutions across the globe.

In the Face Recognition Challenge, Innovatrics secured first place, followed by IDBio and Neurotechnology. In the Iris Recognition Challenge, IDBio emerged as the winner, followed by Neurotechnology and Innovatrics.

The competition also saw participation from Indian organizations and institutions, including Perfios, Ooru, and IIIT Hyderabad.

A key feature of the challenges was the use of large anonymised biometric datasets collected from children aged 5 to 10 years, with samples taken five years apart. This enabled participants' solutions to be tested on their ability to accurately verify identities despite age-related biometric changes, addressing a significant real-world challenge in child biometric authentication.

UIDAI highlighted that the exercise is unique globally due to its use of long-term child biometric datasets for evaluating face and iris matching technologies. The assessments were carried out in a controlled environment using large anonymised datasets to ensure accuracy and consistency.

The authority said the benchmarking initiative is aimed at fostering innovation in biometric technologies, encouraging participation from industry and academia, and advancing the development of reliable biometric identity solutions for future applications.