DPDP Compliance for Indian Businesses
End-to-end readiness for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act — from gap assessment to DPIA, policies, consent architecture, and a defensible operating posture before Section 33 enforcement hits.
Full DPDP Programme Scope
Every engagement delivers regulator-ready artefacts: a data inventory, DPIA, policy set, consent flow, breach playbook, and evidence pack that stands up to a Board of India notice.
How We Work
A four-phase readiness programme, time-boxed and priced up-front so your leadership and engineering teams know exactly what gets shipped by when.
Discovery & Data Mapping
Stakeholder interviews, systems inventory, and personal data flow mapping across business units, SaaS vendors, and data warehouses. Output: a canonical data inventory and processing register.
Gap Assessment & DPIA
Control-level gap assessment against DPDP obligations and a full Data Protection Impact Assessment for high-risk processing. Output: risk register with prioritised remediation plan.
Implementation & Policies
Consent architecture, Data Principal rights workflow, processor agreements, notices, and internal SOPs. Build phase pairs with your engineering team so controls ship, not sit in a PDF.
Validation & Training
Tabletop breach exercise, internal audit, staff training, and a signed-off evidence pack that maps each control to its DPDP obligation. Quarterly check-ins available as a retainer.
Engagement Sizes
Fixed-scope packages in INR, designed for Indian startups, SMEs, and larger data fiduciaries. All prices exclude 18% GST.
- Structured gap assessment against DPDP Act
- High-level personal data inventory
- Prioritised remediation roadmap
- Executive readout with leadership
- Quick-win policy templates
- Timeline: 2 to 3 weeks
- Full DPDP readiness programme
- Formal Data Protection Impact Assessment
- End-to-end data mapping
- Consent and notice architecture design
- Privacy policy, SOP, and processor templates
- Data Principal rights workflow
- Breach notification playbook
- Staff awareness training session
- Timeline: 6 to 10 weeks
- Everything in Professional
- Multi-entity and cross-border mapping
- Consent Manager integration support
- Ongoing DPO-as-a-service retainer
- Board-level reporting cadence
- Quarterly DPIA refresh cycle
- Regulator correspondence support
- Annual tabletop breach simulation
- Timeline: 10 to 14 weeks + retainer
What You Actually Receive
Every deliverable is regulator-ready: structured, cross-referenced to DPDP obligations, and defensible under a Section 33 inquiry.
Gap Assessment Report
Control-by-control scorecard against DPDP Act obligations with risk rating and remediation priority.
Data Inventory Register
A canonical register of personal data categories, systems, purposes, retention, and processor flows.
Formal DPIA
Data Protection Impact Assessment signed off by the DPO / Data Fiduciary representative.
Policy Suite
Privacy notice, internal privacy policy, retention policy, access policy, and processor SOP templates.
Consent and Rights Playbook
Design docs for notice, consent capture, withdrawal, and Data Principal rights workflows.
Breach Notification Pack
72-hour breach notification playbook, template notifications, and Board of India escalation plan.
DPDP Questions
Straight answers on scope, timeline, penalties, and artefacts.
Who must comply with the DPDP Act 2023?
Any entity that processes digital personal data of individuals in India, irrespective of where the entity is located. This includes Indian startups, SaaS companies, banks, healthtech, edtech, and multinationals offering services to Indian residents.
What are the penalties for DPDP non-compliance?
The Data Protection Board of India can impose financial penalties up to Rs. 250 crore for significant failures such as inadequate breach notification, weak security safeguards, or failure to honour Data Principal rights.
How long does a DPDP readiness programme take?
A Starter gap assessment runs 2 to 3 weeks. The Professional readiness programme runs 6 to 10 weeks. Enterprise programmes covering multi-entity groups, cross-border flows, and DPO retainer run 10 to 14 weeks before rolling into ongoing support.
Do we need a Data Protection Officer (DPO)?
A formal DPO is mandatory only for Significant Data Fiduciaries. However, every Data Fiduciary must publish a grievance officer contact. RingSafe offers a DPO-as-a-service retainer for SMEs that need a named, accountable privacy lead without a full-time hire.
What artefacts does the Data Protection Board expect?
In an inquiry the Board typically asks for your personal data inventory, DPIA, privacy policy, consent evidence, breach records, processor contracts, and control evidence. Our evidence pack is structured around this likely inquiry shape.
Do you help integrate Consent Manager frameworks?
Yes. We design the consent capture schema, retention, withdrawal flows, and audit log structure aligned with emerging Consent Manager rules. We also advise on build versus buy for the consent layer.
How does DPDP differ from GDPR?
DPDP is narrower in scope (only digital personal data), has a different consent regime, different penalty structure, and introduces unique constructs like Consent Managers. We have a detailed DPDP vs GDPR blog for engineering and legal teams.
Can you support us during an actual data breach?
Yes. We provide 72-hour breach response support covering forensic scoping, Data Protection Board notification drafting, Data Principal communications, and post-incident hardening. Retainer and ad-hoc engagements both available.
Related Reading
Book a 30-Minute DPDP Scoping Call
Tell us your product, your customer base, and where personal data flows. We will return a fixed INR quote and timeline within 48 hours.
Founder-led delivery. CISSP certified. Responds within 24 hours.
DPDP & compliance skills, without the course fluff
Practitioner-written modules covering the Indian DPDP Act, ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, third-party risk, and internal audits.