MeitY Startup Hub throws open innovation challenge to build open-source consent systems for data protection law

The Meity Startup Hub on Tuesday announced an innovation challenge for startups and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to develop open-source consent management systems to help organisations comply with the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act.

The winning solutions will be taken up by the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity) and made available as a digital public good.

“One or more solutions will be hosted by MeitY on an online repository, which will be open for the public. It will act as a digital public good which can be downloaded and further worked upon by interested individuals/organisations,” the government said in the guidelines for the challenge.


The government highlighted the need for a customisable and affordable consent management solution in a ‘plug and play’ format to address the needs of government departments, MSMEs, startups and others. The aim is to standardise consent handling practices across the Indian digital ecosystem.

Registrations are open till April 27.

The solutions must address consent lifecycle management and DPDP Act compliance with multilingual support, a user notification management system, immutable audit logging, and secure multifactor authentication, the guidelines said.

They should cater to sectors across IT and software services, banking and financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, ecommerce, education, and more.

Indian tech startups registered with the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT), MSMEs operating in the IT/software domain, companies registered under the Companies Act, and LLPs registered in India are eligible to participate in the challenge. They must be domiciled in India with a majority Indian ownership.

The top six in the architecture round will be awarded Rs 1 lakh each, while the winner and runner-up in the coding round will be awarded Rs 25 lakh and Rs 15 lakh, respectively.

Dates for the evaluation of submitted architectures and coding, and minimum viable products are yet to be announced.