India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act and newly released Rules signal one of the most consequential shifts in the country’s digital landscape. For technology leaders—CIOs, CDOs, CISOs, CTOs, and GCC heads—the act is far more than a compliance milestone. It demands a fundamental reshaping of how modern enterprises collect, process, store, and govern personal data across digital, cloud, analytics, and AI ecosystems.

Most organizations today run on fragmented architectures: isolated CRM and marketing platforms, ungoverned analytics data marts, multi-copy data lakes, and AI pipelines without privacy guardrails. DPDP disrupts this model entirely. The Rules mandate purpose limitation, verifiable consent, retention minimization, breach readiness, and demonstrable safeguards across the full lifecycle of personal data. Achieving this requires redesigning the data operating model—not just updating privacy policies.

This aligns with the structured roles-and-responsibilities model proposed in the ISACA Journal article[1], “Establishing Enterprise Roles for Data Protection.” The paper emphasized the need for well-defined accountability across Data Protection Officers, Data Owners, Stewards, Privacy Engineers, and Security functions. DPDP now makes this model indispensable. Enterprises must establish unified governance structures where technology, legal, security, data, AI, and business teams operate under a shared privacy framework.

Meanwhile, India’s privacy solutions market is poised to enter a hyper-growth phase. With DPDP enforcement, GCC expansion, and global scrutiny on AI, based on current market research and industry benchmarks, India’s combined software and services market for data privacy is expected to reach USD 1.0–1.7 billion by 2030 [2]. This includes consent management, privacy engineering, automated anonymization pipelines, subject-rights orchestration, and responsible-AI controls.

For technology leaders, the path ahead is clear:

• Re-architect the data foundation using privacy-by-design principles rather than post hoc controls.

• Modernize data lineage, metadata, tokenization, and anonymization, ensuring every system can demonstrate DPDP compliance.

• Establish cross-functional privacy governance, aligned to the enterprise roles model—DPO, Data Owners, Privacy Engineers, AI Risk Stewards, and more.

• Implement privacy-aware AI and analytics workflows, preventing uncontrolled proliferation of personal data.

• Build DPDP-aligned workforce capabilities, ensuring teams understand data minimization, retention, and lawful usage at a practical level.

DPDP is not a constraint—it is an accelerant. Enterprises that embed privacy engineering early will experience reduced data risk, higher customer trust, stronger regulatory confidence, and a smoother path to scaling AI across business functions.

As India enters the next decade of digital transformation, technology leaders will shape whether DPDP becomes a compliance burden or a competitive advantage. Those who embrace privacy

as a core architectural principle will lead the way in building resilient, responsible, and AI-ready enterprises.

References:

1. ISACA Journal Article on Establishing Enterprise Roles for Data Protection: https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2022/volume-6/establishing enterprise-roles-for-data-protection

2. Reference Note for Market Sizing:

The estimate for India’s combined data privacy software and services market reaching USD 1.0–1.7 billion by 2030 is derived from a synthesis of publicly available market projections and widely acknowledged industry benchmarks:

a. India Privacy Software Market Size:

Multiple research firms (including MarketsandMarkets, ResearchAndMarkets, and Statista) place the India-focused privacy management software segment at approximately USD 80–100 million in 2024, with a projected CAGR of 20–25% through 2030.

This yields an estimated USD 300–350 million privacy software market by 2030.

b. Software-to-Services Ratio:

Across cybersecurity, governance, and privacy, industry literature (including Gartner, KPMG, and Deloitte reports) consistently indicates that services spending is 3–5× software spending in emerging regulatory markets.

Applying this ratio yields a USD 900 million – 1.4 billion privacy services market by 2030.

c. Enterprise & GCC Demand Growth:

Public NASSCOM data indicates rapid expansion of India’s Global Capability Center (GCC) ecosystem—from ~1,580 centers in 2024 to a projected 2,000+ by 2030—many handling global data workloads.

This expansion directly increases demand for privacy engineering, consent orchestration, anonymization, retention automation, and responsible AI operations.

d. Combined, these projections reasonably estimate India’s total privacy market (software + services) at approximately USD 1.0–1.7 billion by 2030.

The author is Sai Krishnan Mohan, Vice President (Data & Analytics), Bajaj Auto Ltd.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCISO does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCISO shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.

Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals.

Subscribe to Newsletter to get latest insights & analysis in your inbox.

All about ETCISO industry right on your smartphone!