DATA PROTECTION COMPLIANCE IN INDIAN CORPORATES: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS UNDER THE DIGITAL PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION ACT, 2023

INTRODUCTION Digital Economy in India is a changed landscape of how companies in India maintain and manage personal data. There are digital payments and services, AI, and e-commerce. There are large-scale data processing as core business strategy. However, there are monopolistic business expansion, individual privacy, data misuse, and the absence of accountability. 2023 Digital Personal Data Protection Act is the first in India as a data governance legislation to provide a framework to balance organization accountability with safeguarding data principal rights and the wrongful processing digital personal data. Core principles of the Act are processing data lawfully, purpose specification, consent, grievance mechanism, data breach notification and related penalties, while being a business rationale are compliance, loss to a breach, regulatory fines. There are more than 50 challenges restatement the promise of the DPDP Act to corporates in India, especially limited infrastructure, internal data mapping, third party system, regulatory compliance, and data security. Other challenges to less compliance budget and technical resources which are more by micro and small registered businesses. The Act requires businesses to fundamentally change how they think of data as an asset because of their focus on consent, data minimization, and how they allocate data purpose. Businesses must shift from broad and open-ended collection data regimes to rights-based, and privacy-centric models. These challenges, it becomes extremely important to seek profitably viable ways for Indian corporations to comply with the DPDP. Internal policy changes, employee awareness training, automated tools for consent management, privacy compliant-by-design models, and continuous internal audit mechanisms may offer reasonable means to compliance. Indian businesses must be made aware of these compliance challenges to be responsible for the gaps in consumer trust, and in the absence of consumer confidence, the lack alignment of the Indian economy with international standards for data privacy will be even more pronounced.