Mukesh Ambani, chairman and MD of RIL, has said that, “India’s data must be controlled and owned by Indian people ─ and not by corporates, especially global corporations. For India to succeed in this data-driven revolution, we will have to migrate the control and ownership of Indian data back to India ─ in other words, Indian wealth back to every Indian” (sic) according to a media statement. At the Vibrant Gujarat summit which took place from the 18-20 January, Ambani said that “we have to collectively launch a new movement against data colonisation. In this new world, data is the new oil. And data is the new wealth.” In his Vibrant Gujarat speech, Ambani also added that Reliance had invested Rs 3 lakh crores and created about 1 million jobs in Gujarat, both of which it would double in the next 10 years. Reliance Retail also plans to launch a “commerce platform” for 12 lakh small retailers and shopkeepers in Gujarat. Data localisation, data privacy and regulation Ambani’s comment comes on the heels of Indian regulators introducing schemes to localise not just payments but also all digitally collected data within the country. This means that any foreign entity operating within India will have to store Indian users’ and transactional data in the country. In April 2018, the RBI, mandated that all payments system operators working in India had to ensure that data related to payment systems operations be stored only in India only within 6 months. The move came into…
