Inside NBFC100 Chennai: What We Heard as the Summit’s AI and Privacy Partners

It was a privilege to be part of the 23rd NBFC100 Tech Summit in Chennai this week — not just as attendees, but as the event’s AI and Privacy partners.

There’s something different about being on the ground for a summit like this, rather than following it online or through recap decks later. The NBFC and fintech ecosystem in India is moving fast right now, and Chennai’s edition of NBFC100 brought together the people actually steering that movement — CXOs, compliance heads, tech leaders, and founders all in one room, all wrestling with the same set of questions: how do you scale lending and financial services responsibly, while keeping pace with AI adoption and tightening data privacy expectations at the same time?

Walking the floor through the day, it was clear how much the conversation has shifted. A year ago, DPDP Act compliance was still a “we’ll get to it” line item for a lot of NBFCs. This year, it was front and center of almost every conversation we had. Boards are asking sharper questions. Compliance heads are no longer just tracking consent logs — they’re thinking about board-level accountability, DPBI inspection readiness, and what actually happens the day a regulator comes knocking. That shift made every conversation about DataRakshaQ land differently than it might have a year ago. We weren’t explaining why data privacy matters anymore — we were talking specifics: RoPA strategy, Section 6 consent scenarios, and what a realistic compliance roadmap actually looks like for an NBFC that’s serious about getting ahead of the DPBI rather than reacting to it after the fact.

But honestly, the best part of the summit wasn’t the sessions or the stage conversations — it was the people we met there. We caught up with familiar faces from the industry, the ones we’ve built relationships with over past events and past conversations, and it always grounds the work in something real to hear directly from them what’s keeping them up at night. At the same time, there were just as many new faces this time — founders, compliance leads, and tech decision-makers we hadn’t met before, hearing about DataRakshaQ for the first time. Some of those turned into genuinely meaningful conversations — not the quick booth-visit, collect-a-brochure kind, but real discussions about where their compliance gaps actually are, what’s kept them from acting on DPDP so far, and where a platform like DataRakshaQ could actually fit into their roadmap.

None of it happens without the team. Being on the ground in Chennai together — meeting people, running the booth, having the same conversation twenty different ways for twenty different NBFCs, and still finding the energy to make each one feel like the first — is a different kind of work than building the content and decks back at base. It’s a good reminder, every single time, of who we’re actually building DataRakshaQ for and why the work matters beyond the slide deck.

One day, but a lot packed into it — a lot of conversations, a good number of new relationships, some genuinely meaningful discussions with people we’re meeting for the first time, and a lot of validation that the direction we’ve taken with DataRakshaQ — helping NBFCs move from reactive compliance to genuine, board-level data governance — is exactly where the industry is headed. Grateful to have been part of it, and looking forward to where these conversations go next.