India’s Delhi High Court is examining allegations that global consultancy firm KPMG made an unauthorised visit to a software developer’s office and copied the country’s Digi Yatra mobile app, which uses facial recognition to speed up passenger check-ins at airports.
Digi Yatra is India’s government-backed digital identity system for air travel, and Data Evolve Solutions is the start-up that built the app and core software under a formal agreement with the Digi Yatra Foundation (DYF).
KPMG entered the picture as an external consultant engaged by DYF, and Data Evolve alleges that during this engagement, KPMG accessed its Hyderabad office without authorisation and cloned the app. The developer says the replicated version was deployed across 28 airports, even though its contract allowed rollout at only four.
The KPMG allegation forms part of a broader legal battle between Data Evolve and DYF over control of the Digi Yatra ecosystem. The allegation surfaced during a hearing on whether new questions should be added to an ongoing legal dispute over ownership of the Digi Yatra digital identity platform.
At the hearing, Justice Subramonium Prasad asked Data Evolve to show how the new issues they wanted to introduce — including the alleged KPMG visit and wider deployment of a cloned app — related to the original case. Data Evolve said the information was relevant to proving ownership of the technology and noted it had developed the app in 2020, before signing the 2021 agreement with DYF.
The judge said new issues can be added only if they appear in the original pleadings and observed that most of the proposed additions were either already covered by the four issues framed on 29 October or unsupported by the initial filings. DYF will respond to the request, and the matter will be heard again on 10 December. DYF has also sought to add its own issues.
The High Court has previously framed four key questions:
- Whether DYF is the rightful owner of the Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem under the 2021 agreement.
- If so, whether DYF also owns rights to the software and services created by Data Evolve.
- Whether Data Evolve violated DYF’s rights.
- Whether DYF misused any intellectual property belonging to Data Evolve.
DYF argues that the 2021 agreement gives it full intellectual property rights over the Digi Yatra platform and all future developments. Data Evolve maintains that it owns the underlying software architecture and pre-existing technology.
The dispute began in late 2023 after allegations surfaced that the promoter of Data Evolve had diverted ₹36.53 crore ($ 4.4 million) from an unrelated government traffic-fines project the company was handling. Although the allegation had nothing to do with Digi Yatra, it prompted the Digi Yatra Foundation (DYF) to question whether Data Evolve should continue as its technology partner.
After seeking explanations and finding the response unsatisfactory, DYF issued a disengagement notice in January 2024, directing the company to hand over the Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem, the mobile app, backend systems, and all access credentials.
Data Evolve refused, arguing that it owns key parts of the software’s underlying architecture and has since filed a separate case in Hyderabad to protect what it claims is its own technology.
In March 2024, the Delhi High Court issued an interim order restraining Data Evolve from accessing or copying any Digi Yatra passenger data, citing the sensitive nature of biometric information handled by the platform.
