New Delhi, Mar 21 (IANS): In a bid to advance the vision of digital inclusion, the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Thursday launched the BhashaNet portal.

The portal was launched at the Universal Acceptance (UA) Day event.

The event was held with the active support of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

At the event, S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, highlighted that Universal Acceptance is a necessity for a truly inclusive Internet to allow non-English speakers to access the Internet.

He further emphasised on India's potential to lead in standards for universal acceptance conformance.

The event featured engaging panel discussions and workshops, with representatives from Bhashini, ONDC, NIC, C-DAC Microsoft, UASG of ICANN, Data Xgen, Infibeam, ZOHO and FICCI sharing insights and best practices for achieving universal acceptance readiness. These sessions aimed to empower participants and the community at large in their efforts to make applications and systems universal acceptance compliant.

Set up on June 19, 2003, the NIXI is tasked to increase Internet penetration and adoption in the country by facilitating various infrastructure aspects to enable the internet ecosystem to be managed and used by the masses.

It offers IXPs towards building Internet Exchange Points, the .IN Registry towards building the .in domain digital identity, IRINN towards IPv4 and IPv6 addresses adoption, and Data Centre services under NIXI-CSC towards data storage services.