E-commerce firms ask govt to allow sharing customer data with group companie

In the first meeting after the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) came out with its draft e-commerce policy, some stakeholders last week asked the government to relax the data storage rules to allow a company to share data at least with its group companies, some of the participants told FE.

The draft policy says “sharing of such data with third party entities, even with customer consent, is barred under the policy”. In the absence of a clear-cut definition of the third party, this will mean an Amazon India won’t be able to share data with Amazon Inc for business development or better customer satisfaction. This could potentially limit acquisition and investment opportunities for foreign companies in the Indian start-up space.