Other Countries Will Follow India’s Lead, Concerns On Data Localisation Valid, Says Dell CEO

Dell Technologies’ CEO (Chief Executive Officer), Michael Dell, acknowledged India’s data concerns as legitimate and its insistence on data localisation as valid. He also expected India’s strong stance on data sovereignty to spill over to over other countries and lead them on the same path.

“If you don't know where your data is or it’s gotten into the wrong hands, it can be a very, very dangerous problem,” he told Economic Times in an interview in Mumbai. “I would not be surprised if pretty much every country in the world creates something like this,” he added.

India’s banking regulator, Reserve Bank of India, had given a six-month notice period to payment companies to set up infrastructure to store Indian financial data in India. Though companies like Google Pay, Amazon and PhonePe had complied with the regulations, multinational card networks like Visa and MasterCard are still in breach of the deadline.

The CEO expressed admiration for India’s push towards digitisation, “These (initiatives) are a platform for tremendous amount of growth and innovation and no other country in the world is doing this in any way close to what India is,” he said. The current government, by launching schemes like Digital India and Jan Dhan Yojana, has moved to provide a necessary lever to the digital ecosystem and while trying to bring essential public services at the doorstep of millions of citizens.