Helo.ai Founder & Managing Director Vikram Raichura has authored a guest column in MediaNews4U titled "Beyond Compliance: How the DPDP Act Is Driving Smarter, More Contextual Customer Conversations" — a piece that reframes India's incoming data protection regime as the biggest opportunity Indian marketers have had in a decade.

Drawing on more than two decades of building business communication infrastructure from the early days of SMS and IVR to today's AI-powered messaging across WhatsApp, RCS, voice and email — Vikram argues that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act is not a constraint. It is, in his words, "a blueprint for doing customer communication better."

The end of the spray-and-pray era

For years, the default in Indian digital marketing was volume — bigger lists, scraped data, low open rates absorbed as the cost of doing business. The DPDP Act, passed in August 2023 and operationalised through rules notified in November 2025, fundamentally changes that equation. Explicit, purpose-specific consent is now mandatory. Penalties for breach can reach ₹250 crore, enforced by the newly constituted Data Protection Board of India.

The takeaway for brands is direct: you can no longer talk to people who haven't told you they want to hear from you.

Consent as a signal, not a hurdle

The column makes the case that an opted-in audience is, by definition, a warmer one — and that the conversations possible within that relationship are categorically different from cold outreach. A customer who has explicitly chosen to hear from a brand on WhatsApp, for a defined purpose, is engaging in a dialogue. Anyone else is being interrupted.

This is where the DPDP framework, far from narrowing the marketing opportunity, elevates it.

The three-step playbook for brands right now

With most DPDP provisions taking effect by May 2027, Vikram lays out what brands should be doing today:

1. Run a data audit — map every touchpoint, consent mechanism, and downstream activation. Most organisations will find inconsistencies.
2. Build consent infrastructure as a communication layer — not a legal checkbox. Make privacy notices readable. Treat the preference centre as a product surface.
3. Redesign your customer communication strategy around the consented, first-party audience — invest in segmentation, personalisation, channel orchestration, and the quality of every individual message.

Why this moment matters

The article also points to a rare convergence: the DPDP Act, the global phase-out of third-party cookies, and the rise of AI-driven messaging that finally makes one-to-one contextual communication scalable. Brands that build strong first-party data architectures now will hold a durable advantage over those still chasing third-party signals.

As Vikram concludes in the piece: "The DPDP Act did not create this shift. It just made it impossible to ignore."

👉 Read the full article on MediaNews4U: Beyond Compliance: How the DPDP Act Is Driving Smarter, More Contextual Customer Conversations