Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India’s digital marketing landscape is on the brink of a dramatic shift. With the Government notifying the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025, organisations now have 18 months to rebuild how they collect, store and deploy personal data.
The rules operationalise India’s first comprehensive privacy framework and mark the beginning of a stricter, rights-based data environment — one in which high-volume, loosely consented marketing campaigns can no longer run unchecked.
Built on the DPDP Act of 2023, the new framework demands clear, purpose-specific consent for every act of data collection. Companies must disclose why they need personal data, restrict themselves to that purpose alone, and allow individuals to withdraw consent at any point.
The law also requires prompt notification to users and the newly formed Data Protection Board of India in the event of a data breach. For a digital ecosystem long accustomed to minimal accountability, these rules represent a decisive shift.
Cost of non-compliance
Nothing has caught industry attention more than the financial consequences of ignoring these obligations. The framework allows penalties of up to ₹250 crore for failing to maintain adequate security safeguards.
Additional sanctions can apply when breaches are not reported properly. For the corporate sector, mishandling personal data is no longer a reputational setback —it is a direct financial and legal threat.
The impact is particularly sharp for marketing-led sectors. The law places consent at the heart of every customer engagement, forcing companies to abandon vague, bundled permissions buried inside lengthy terms and conditions.
Any form of targeted advertising, behavioural profiling or AI-driven personalisation must now be supported by verifiable, specific consent. The rules tighten further in the case of minors: companies must secure parental consent before enrolling users under eighteen or exposing them to personalised content.
Crackdown on spams
The privacy overhaul arrives at a moment when the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is intensifying its battle against unsolicited commercial communication. Application-to-person messages — used by apps, banks and businesses — have surged sharply, rising from about 71 SMS per user per month in March 2021 to nearly 103 by June 2025. Even as personal texting declines, promotional and transactional messages have grown exponentially.
To combat this, Trai has mandated that all bulk messages must pass through a blockchain-based distributed ledger, where every sender ID and message template must be registered before campaigns are sent out.
Messages that are not registered simply cannot leave the network. From 6 May 2025, every sender header must also include a single-letter suffix — P for promotional, S for service, T for transactional and G for government — making it easier for users to distinguish advertisements from legitimate communication. This tightening of the telecom regime complements the DPDP rules, making unconsented mass messaging not only unethical but increasingly illegal.
The combined pressure of DPDP and Trai regulations is being felt most keenly by India’s micro, small and medium enterprises. Most MSMEs rely heavily on digital channels such as Google Search, YouTube, Amazon and WhatsApp for Business to reach customers.
Many small firms built extensive customer lists over time without detailed consent trails or formal data-mapping practices. Under the new rules, this will no longer suffice.
Businesses will now need to trace every point at which customer data is collected — whether through website forms, app registrations, WhatsApp conversations, cookies or CRM databases.
They must classify the data by sensitivity, revisit older contact lists where consent is unclear and redesign their communication strategies to ensure simple, accessible opt-in and opt-out pathways.
The transition will require investments in privacy audits, cybersecurity upgrades, training and consent-management systems — costs that will be felt immediately but are unavoidable for long-term compliance.
Marketing experts believe that the long-term result will be a move from indiscriminate “blast” messaging to more contextual, trust-driven communication. Campaigns that rely entirely on high-volume outreach without user clarity or explicit permission will no longer be viable.
Instead, brands will need to build credibility by using data that is transparently collected and genuinely relevant to users. Over time, privacy and personalisation will have to work in harmony rather than at odds.
The age of spray-and-pray digital marketing is coming to a close. With the DPDP Rules coming into force and Trai tightening its anti-spam safeguards, India’s marketers are facing a clear choice.
They can adapt to a privacy-first ecosystem — or risk steep penalties and eroding consumer trust. In the new digital economy, compliant communication is not merely good practice. It is the cost of staying in business.