Articles by Soumya Shekhar

Recently, a bug in Airtel’s mobile application put the personal data of 300 million users at risk. Ankita, a millennial, who has all her financial information saved on apps, was scared that her card details may have been leaked. In the age of the internet, where everything is available upon a click, data security and privacy have become important issues.  In order to ensure that India has a robust legal system governing and regulating data privacy, the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 (PDP) was introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 11, 2019. The Bill is currently before a Parliament…

As the central and state governments seek to boost startups and create a startup culture, there has been a spurt in young entrepreneurs experimenting with innovative ideas that will become the next unicorn. In 2019 alone, over 1300 startups were registered in the country. India currently has around 8900 startups in the technology domain alone. While a good number of new ventures are centred around technologies like artificial intelligence, other fields too are seeing a host of startups, some examples being YourStory, a startup about startups, legal-tech startups such as Leegality and startups focusing on social issues like Think Niti,…

With the growth of online marketplaces, and India’s growth as a consumer economy, the government brought into law a new Consumer Protection Bill, 2019, replacing the earlier Consumer Protection Act, 1986. This Bill has been passed by both the Houses of the Parliament and received the President’s assent on August 9, 2019. However, it is to be noted that the said law will come into effect on the date which will be notified by the Central Government. Such notification is yet to be issued and for practical purposes, Consumer Protection Act, 1986 is still in force till a notification enforcing…

Amit, working in an IT company, suddenly found that the perks he had been promised with his job offer had suddenly been withdrawn. When he enquired, he was told that the company’s HR policies had changed. While signing on the dotted line, Amit had not read his employment agreement carefully and failed to notice the clause which entitled the company to change its HR policies from time to time. There are zillions of employees like Amit, who do not read their employment contract carefully and affix their signature based only on the figures of remuneration in the document. However, it…

When Ashish Prasad, technical lead at a bootstrapped IT startup, quit his job to take up a new one, he was assured by the company that his dues would be cleared within 45 days. But days turned into months, and repeated reminders and emails went unanswered with the dues still not paid. Not wanting to go in for time consuming and costly litigation, Ashish who had lost all hope of ever getting his dues, said he was advised to file an insolvency petition under the bankruptcy laws. “However, I am not sure if this will be fruitful”. There are many…

When Chandra, in his late sixties, decided to invest his life’s savings in a house in Hyderabad, the builder promised to hand over possession of the new home in December 2018. But with the project nowhere near completion, Chandra has now been promised possession in March 2020. And lives in the hope that if even that date is not kept, the builder will pay him interest on the amount he has deposited, as the new Real Estate Regulation Act (RERA) mandates. Passed with much fanfare in 2016, RERA was supposed to protect home buyers like Chandra from unscrupulous builders, especially…