CISL's Suraksha Mudra To Fight Counterfeiters

Intellectual Property (IP) theft has become a sophisticated industry, and is estimated to be worth around $900 billion across the world. Counterfeiting and piracy are more profitable today than narcotics and have become the top crimes of the 21st century. Countering the perpetrators has thus become a priority for manufacturers and society as a whole.

Customer Infinity Services Ltd (CISL), a Bangalore-based security solutions company, has developed a product known as ‘Suraksha Mudra’, which they say is a stamp with explicit multiple security features and machine-readable technology (including RFID) that helps in the fight to eradicate counterfeits.

Counterfeits eat into national revenue

Counterfeiting can be done for a wide range of consumer items. There could be total fakes that are non-functional look-alikes of the original products, functional but inferior items, or fully functional items illegally manufactured without paying copyright fees. To help distinguish the originals from the counterfeits, the copyright holder may use serial numbers, holograms etc., on the product before releasing them into open market.

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According to an AC Nielsen study, the practice costs the Indian government more than Rs 900 crore in lost excise revenues and tax evasion.

Consumers are attracted to these counterfeits due to their lower prices and similar looks. The economic consequences to manufacturers are obvious, but the economic consequences of widespread piracy and counterfeiting business in a country run much deeper.

Manufacturers of affected products have a direct loss in sale revenues; this is often directly related to losses in tax revenues, and may also result in job losses. In social terms, the illegal business of counterfeiting and piracy brings with it all the negative side-effects of surreptitious labour.

Manufacturers, both local and international, lose trust in the marketplace if they realise that their IP rights are not respected and cannot effectively be enforced. This will lead to a sharp decline in investment and eventually have a direct impact on a country’s national revenues.

A new way to fight counterfeits

CISL’s ‘Suraksha Mudra’(SM) is a security seal for authentication of any commodity/ product that is available in the market. It can also be an authentication for documents or assets. CISL is looking to rope in universities to issue certificates with the SM seal. The application that supports the process is reportedly developed by CISL and allows the authentication process online, offline, and on the spot for any product at any time.

Says Prof. Raju Chandrashekar, a member of the National Graduates Registry Committee of the UGC (Universities Grants Commission) and a national-level expert in higher education policies and management: “We’re fighting to stop fraud at the degree certificate level as this is a growing crime in our country. Students who study hard and get through their exams may be held in suspicion just because someone has been smart enough to forge their certificates using the latest technology that even the verifying authorities find difficult to identify or sort out. Suraksha Mudra is a remarkable discovery and we expect it to help us through our noble endeavour. It uses nine layers of security, which no one has so far been able to promise, and I’m convinced this will make things easier for many.”

The technology and target verticals

SM will prove to be a viable solution to counter the counterfeiters as RFID is developing fast in the global market. SM reportedly uses the world’s tiniest state-of-the-art RFID chip (known as µ-chip) developed by Hitachi Asia Ltd., and stores 128-bit information. CISL says that online data transactions are secured using an encryption securing the authentication of the assets subjected to verification.

CISL plans to introduce the product through its global business network and has planned an integrated net architecture for secure transactions.

BR Badhri, CEO, CISL says, “We are looking at this technology being adopted by manufacturers and customers alike as they both are the affected community here. We have so far got good responses from the education sector and consumer goods sector as well. Our technology is robust and we are thus confident to take it to the market. We have used RFID in our product and we will have the data fed into a centralised system that will provide the required proof of authentication as and when it is fed into the system by a user. We have designed adequate backup for retrieving data. If the online mode is not working due to downtime, users are given a handheld electronic device to refer and verify the seal and thus the authenticity of the product. If this device also fails, there is a simpler device that can be used for verification.”

SM is expecting to find a market in several verticals such as the electronic industry, healthcare, education, pharma, packaging, banking and government. CISL is piloting a project for a university in Bangalore and is in discussion with other renowned universities for certificates and mark sheet protection using Suraksha Mudra stamps.