Consent Management: Building Frameworks That Hold Up Under Scrutiny
Consent management framework design, technology selection, and operational implementation built around the recognition that consent under DPDP is not a checkbox but an ongoing relationship with data principals.
Why This
Matters Now
Consent under the DPDP Act is more demanding than the consent most organizations currently rely on. The Act requires that consent be free, specific, informed, unconditional, and unambiguous. It must be provided through clear affirmative action. It must be limited to the specified purpose. It must be capable of being withdrawn as easily as it was given. It must be supported by notice that meets specific content requirements. And it must be documented in a way that proves all of these conditions were met when the data principal eventually asks how their data is being used or when the Data Protection Board examines the organization's processing.
Most organizations have nothing that meets these requirements. They have privacy policies buried in website footers. They have terms and conditions checkboxes that bundle multiple consents into a single click. They have implied consent based on continued use of services. They have legacy databases of customer data acquired under consent regimes that would not satisfy DPDP requirements. They have marketing data shared with third parties under arrangements that the original data principals never specifically consented to. Each of these creates exposure when the consent the organization relies on is examined against what the Act actually requires.
The architectural challenge is that consent management is not a standalone capability. It is integrated with notice presentation, with the systems that capture consent, with the databases that store consent records, with the workflows that respect consent in subsequent processing, with the mechanisms that allow consent withdrawal, and with the audit infrastructure that proves consent was valid at the time of collection. Building consent management means building or modifying every one of these touchpoints, then maintaining them as the business evolves and the regulatory framework matures.
The DPDP Act also introduces consent managers as a regulated category of intermediaries that can manage consent on behalf of data principals across multiple data fiduciaries. The framework around consent managers is still developing, but organizations should be planning for a future where consent managers play a significant role in how data principals interact with data fiduciaries. The technical and operational integration with consent manager infrastructure is something organizations need to design for now, not retrofit later.
How We
Deliver
A structured methodology that ensures rigour, transparency, and measurable outcomes at every stage.
Current State Assessment
We start by mapping the organization's current consent practices: what consent is being captured, where, how, and on what legal basis. This baseline reveals the gap between current state and DPDP requirements, and identifies the consent records that need remediation alongside the workflows that need redesign.
Notice Architecture
DPDP requires notice that is clear, comprehensible, and presented at the right time. We design notice architecture that satisfies these requirements: what information must be presented, when it must be presented, how it must be presented to be understandable to typical data principals, and how it must be documented to prove that notice was given. Notice design is more difficult than most organizations realize because it has to balance regulatory completeness with practical comprehensibility.
Consent Capture Design
Consent capture must be specific to each purpose, granular enough to allow meaningful choice, and structured to produce clear evidence of affirmative action. We design consent capture flows that meet these requirements while remaining usable enough that data principals actually engage with them rather than abandoning the interaction.
Consent Storage and Management
Consent records need to be stored in a form that supports the operational requirements of subsequent processing: the system that runs a marketing campaign needs to know which data principals have consented to marketing, the system that shares data with a third party needs to know which data principals have consented to that sharing, and so on. We design consent storage architectures that integrate with operational systems rather than creating standalone consent databases that nobody actually consults.
Withdrawal and Update Workflows
Data principals must be able to withdraw consent as easily as they gave it. This requires withdrawal mechanisms that are accessible, that propagate through all systems that depend on the original consent, and that produce evidence of the withdrawal for compliance purposes. We design withdrawal workflows that meet these requirements without creating operational disruption.
Consent Manager Integration
For organizations preparing for the consent manager ecosystem the DPDP Act envisions, we design integration architecture that allows consent to flow between the data fiduciary and consent manager infrastructure. This is forward-looking work that positions organizations to operate effectively as the consent manager framework develops.
The Legacy Consent Problem No One Wants to Address
Most organizations have years of accumulated personal data collected under consent regimes that would not satisfy DPDP requirements. The data is in customer databases, marketing systems, analytics platforms, and the various places that personal data accumulates over time. When the Act becomes fully enforceable, the consent supporting this historical data becomes a problem. Organizations cannot simply continue processing it under consent that was never specific, never granular, and often never affirmatively given for the purposes the data is now used for.
The pattern that produces failure is hoping the problem will resolve itself through some combination of regulatory clarification, grandfathering provisions, or selective enforcement. None of these is reliable. The Data Protection Board will eventually have to address how legacy data is treated under the new framework, but the resolution is unlikely to be favorable to organizations that have done nothing to remediate. The organizations that handle this well have started the work of either re-consenting historical data principals where the data is valuable enough to justify the effort, or deleting historical data where re-consenting is not feasible. Neither path is comfortable, but both are better than discovering during enforcement that the organization cannot defend the processing of large parts of its customer base.
The deeper insight is that consent management has to be designed to handle legacy data alongside new data collection. The framework cannot just satisfy DPDP requirements going forward; it has to provide a path for bringing existing data into a defensible state. This is significant work that benefits from careful planning rather than reactive remediation when enforcement begins. Organizations that have not yet started thinking about legacy consent should start now, not because the answer is obvious but because the problem will be even less tractable closer to the deadline.
Consent Management Framework
Capabilities
Comprehensive solutions designed to address your most critical challenges and unlock lasting value.
Consent Framework Design
End-to-end consent management framework aligned with DPDP requirements.
Notice Architecture
Design of notice content, presentation, timing, and documentation.
Consent Capture Design
Granular, specific, evidence-producing consent capture flows.
Multi-Channel Consent
Consent management across web, mobile, in-person, telephonic, and offline channels.
Consent Storage Architecture
Scalable storage for consent records integrated with operational systems.
Withdrawal Workflow Design
Accessible withdrawal mechanisms with propagation across systems.
Consent Manager Integration
Technical and process integration with the emerging consent manager ecosystem.
Legacy Data Remediation
Strategies for bringing pre-DPDP data into a defensible state.
Children's Consent
Specific frameworks for processing children's data with parental consent.
Sensitive Data Consent
Enhanced consent frameworks for sensitive personal data processing.
Marketing and Communications Consent
Granular consent for marketing communications across channels.
Third-Party Data Sharing Consent
Consent frameworks for data sharing with processors and partners.
Consent Audit and Reporting
Ongoing reporting on consent rates, withdrawals, and operational metrics.
Where This Applies
Customer onboarding consent, marketing consent, third-party sharing consent
Patient consent for treatment data, research consent, telehealth consent
Customer profile consent, behavioral analytics consent, marketing consent
User consent for platform services, AI training data consent, customer data on behalf of clients
Subscriber consent, location data consent, marketing consent, regulatory data sharing
Subscriber consent, behavioral analytics consent, advertising consent
Student consent, parental consent for children, research consent
Citizen consent for service delivery, statutory data collection, surveillance consent
Common Questions
Valid consent under DPDP must satisfy multiple requirements simultaneously. It must be free, meaning the data principal had a genuine choice and was not coerced. It must be specific, meaning it relates to a particular processing purpose rather than general processing. It must be informed, meaning the data principal understood what they were consenting to based on adequate notice. It must be unconditional, meaning it was not bundled with consent to other unrelated processing or made a precondition for unrelated services. It must be unambiguous, meaning it was given through clear affirmative action rather than inferred from inaction or pre-ticked boxes. And it must be documented in a form that proves all of these conditions were met. Consent that fails any of these requirements may not be valid even if the data principal believed they were giving consent at the time.
Most current Indian data collection practices rely on broad consent through privacy policies and terms of service that bundle multiple processing purposes into single agreements. DPDP requires consent that is significantly more specific, more granular, and more clearly evidenced. The privacy policy approach does not satisfy DPDP requirements because it fails the specificity test (one consent for many purposes) and often fails the informed test (data principals do not actually read privacy policies). DPDP-compliant consent typically requires separate consent for each meaningful processing purpose, presented in a way that makes the choice clear and obtains affirmative action from the data principal.
The DPDP Act envisions consent managers as registered intermediaries that allow data principals to manage their consent across multiple data fiduciaries through a single interface. The framework is similar to account aggregators in financial services. Consent managers will allow data principals to grant, modify, and withdraw consent at granular levels, with the consent decisions propagating to the relevant data fiduciaries automatically. The consent manager ecosystem is still developing, but organizations should design their consent management infrastructure with consent manager integration in mind. Retrofitting consent manager integration into systems that were designed without it is significantly more difficult than designing for it from the start.
Legacy consent is one of the most difficult DPDP compliance challenges. Personal data collected under previous consent regimes may not satisfy DPDP requirements, particularly if the consent was bundled, generic, or not adequately documented. Organizations have several options: re-consent the data principals through new DPDP-compliant consent flows (effective but operationally significant), narrow the use of legacy data to processing that does not require new consent, delete legacy data that cannot be supported under DPDP, or rely on legal grounds other than consent where applicable. The right approach depends on the value of the legacy data, the feasibility of re-consenting, and the alternative legal grounds available. There is no universal answer, but doing nothing is rarely the right answer.
The DPDP Act requires that notice include the personal data being collected, the purpose for which it will be processed, the manner in which data principal rights can be exercised, and the manner of complaint to the Data Protection Board. The rules and regulations under the Act will likely specify additional content requirements. Beyond the minimum requirements, effective notices include information about retention periods, third-party sharing, cross-border transfers where applicable, and the consequences of withholding consent. Notices should be written in language that data principals can actually understand, not just language that satisfies regulatory expectations of legal completeness.
No. The DPDP Act requires consent to be given through clear affirmative action. Implied consent based on continued use, pre-ticked boxes, or inferred from inaction does not satisfy the Act's requirements. This represents a significant shift from current Indian practice, where implied consent has been common. Organizations that rely on implied consent need to redesign their consent capture to require affirmative action, which typically means active opt-in flows rather than passive opt-out arrangements. The implementation effort is real, but the alternative is consent that may not be valid when challenged.
Multi-channel consent is one of the more complex operational challenges in consent management. Data principals interact with organizations across websites, mobile applications, in-person interactions, call centers, third-party platforms, and increasingly through consent manager intermediaries. Consent must be captured consistently across these channels, stored in a unified consent record, and respected in operational systems regardless of where the original consent was given. This requires consent management infrastructure that integrates across channels rather than creating silos. The architectural decisions made early in consent management implementation determine whether multi-channel consent works smoothly or becomes a perpetual source of operational issues.
Build Consent Management That Survives Regulatory Scrutiny
Consent under DPDP is more demanding than the consent most organizations currently rely on. SARC's data protection practice brings the framework design, technology selection, and operational implementation experience to build consent management that actually meets DPDP requirements rather than just claiming to.
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