DPDP Vendor Checklist: Choosing the Right Compliance Partner

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act has fundamentally changed how organisations must think about personal data, consent, and accountability. Compliance is no longer about isolated audits or static policies—it requires continuous governance across data flows, vendors, users, and internal teams. Yet many organisations struggle to differentiate between DPDP “tools” and true long-term compliance partners. This DPDP vendor checklist outlines the 10 essential capabilities you should evaluate before selecting a verification or privacy partner in 2025. It goes beyond surface-level features to focus on what actually matters in day-to-day operations: real-time visibility into personal data flows, actionable readiness and gap analysis, scalable Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs), robust consent lifecycle governance, and predictable handling of Data Principal Requests (DPRs). The checklist also covers often-overlooked areas such as third-party risk management, automated breach reporting, cookie and tracker compliance, and continuous monitoring—areas where most organisations face the highest operational risk. Importantly, it reflects India’s regulatory reality, including alignment with sectoral expectations from RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, and UIDAI. Whether you’re an enterprise preparing for audits, a fast-scaling startup onboarding millions of users, or a platform managing complex vendor ecosystems, this guide helps you evaluate DPDP vendors with clarity and confidence—so compliance becomes a trust enabler, not a business bottleneck.