Data Protection Gains Momentum in India as IT Minister Assures Privacy

Data protection gains momentum in India, as data becomes crucial for business growth

The concept of data has become quite monumental among Indian companies. It is often referred to as “the new oil”—a valuable fuel that permeates the business. Most organizations realize the potential of investing in robust big data analytics tools that promise cost savings, increased revenue, and productivity gains. More than 90% of global businesses are investing in their organization’s digital transformation initiatives, and data analytics is playing a huge part in this. Gartner defines the data and analytics services market as composed of consulting, implementation, and managed services for decision, analytics, and data management capabilities. These are executed on technology platforms that support an organization’s fact-based decision-making for digital transformation. With this growing popularity of data, data protection gains momentum too.

Data and analytics service providers are helping to shape the future of information technology. Businesses require data solutions that can serve any number of different use cases, and in the case of data analytics services, it can range from consulting to deployment assistance and much more. Coming to the scenario in India, data has also become integral for the growth and development of burgeoning Indian tech and non-tech companies. However, over the past couple of years, since the development of data became crucial, data protection took a backseat. Almost every business across various industries in India is heavily pouring capital towards data analytics by shifting its focus on accumulating, processing, and utilizing data to improve effectiveness in business processes.

However, India’s IT minister has stated that a revised data protection law will create a requirement for sovereign data storage – satisfying big tech companies, which have railed against onshore storage. The law is contentious because earlier this year the government rejected a draft of the bill despite having spent two years trying to get it through parliament.

The Coalition that provided the bill supported the argument that businesses need free cross-border data flows so they can take advantage of offshore SaaS and cloud services and that asking companies to figure out what data must stay onshore and what data can be sent to the cloud is unproductive. The letter to the parliament literally predicted “higher business failure rates … more expensive product offerings from existing market players” and a reduced ability for “Indian consumers to access a truly global internet and quality of services.”

The government is trying its best to construct a framework that will best help big tech companies to protect their data and that of their customers. Google, Amazon, and Meta are all fighting hard to expand their activities and scoop up more data describing citizens, however, the increasing safety in the Indian tech industry will enable citizens to protect themselves from data breaches and thefts.