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Consent managers were supposed to be India's answer to data transparency. Registration opens November 13, and the industry still hasn't cracked the code:
who pays?
The concept is elegant. A data-blind intermediary that holds metadata and routing instructions—not personal data itself—so individuals can manage their consent across all fiduciaries from a single dashboard. Simple. User-empowering. Impossible to monetize.
The Core Problem
I've been tracking this since Consent Forms for Personal Data, and the question remains:
will users pay for consent management? Will data fiduciaries subsidize it? Will
government foot the bill?
The answer is: no one is comfortable paying.
From my work on the DPDP implementation, I noted in
that organizations are still figuring out consent infrastructure. But infrastructure costs are high. Compliance is continuous. The economics don't work if adoption is thin or if users resist paying.
The Real Issue: User Friction
I raised this years ago in Orderly Transition? A Distant Dream, where I flagged "consent fatigue."
The government official I quoted said:
"There should be consent of the citizen BEFORE his or her data is processed for ANY purpose"
—but the implementation assumes users will eagerly adopt consent managers. They won't.
Unless consent managers offer value beyond legal compliance—search, discovery, price negotiation, or monetization of user data—users will see them as friction, not freedom.
What I'd Rather See
In
Resumes Exchange Designed by GROK,
I sketched a model where
consent management is bundled into the platform's core service
—not bolted on as a separate app. Job portals become consent managers;
marketplaces become consent managers; email providers become consent
managers.
This eliminates the standalone business model problem. Consent lives where users already are.
The Brutal Truth
If consent managers charge users, adoption dies.
If they charge fiduciaries, friction increases—
and fiduciaries will look for ways to bypass them or lobby for exemptions.
If government funds them, sustainability depends on continued budgets.
None of these paths is commercially viable as currently designed.
The smartest move:
embed consent into existing user touchpoints and let trust and transparency be
the competitive moat—not a separate fee-paying service.
With Regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
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