One Glitch Away: The Case for a Sovereign Digital Infrastructure in India

By Rishi Agrawal, CEO and Co founder of Teamlease Regtech

India’s digital economy is growing at an unprecedented rate. This growth brings an urgent need to ensure that the infrastructure underpinning it is both resilient and sovereign. At the heart of this conversation lies data localisation, which ensures that critical data resides in the country, governed by domestic law.

Over the past few years, India has taken myriad but measured steps to shape data localisation legislation. The Companies Act, 2013, and the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014, require organisations to maintain financial records at their registered offices in India. The Reserve Bank of India’s 2018 directive, under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, mandates that payment data be stored locally. Additionally, SEBI requires financial data related to Indian investors, such as trading records and sensitive information, to be stored in India. Similarly, the IRDAI (Maintenance ...