Choosing a firm
How to Compare DPDP Compliance Companies in India (2026)
Every ranking of DPDP compliance companies on the first page of this search is published by a firm that appears in it, usually first. That does not make them useless, but it does mean the ranking is not evidence about the market. This page is published by a firm in the same position — SecureRoot is on the list below — so it works the other way round: the seven criteria come first, each naming the kind of evidence that satisfies it, every claim about another firm is attributed to that firm's own page with the date we read it, no firm is given an overall score, and there is a section on where we are the wrong choice.
Criteria, stated first
The seven criteria, and the evidence that satisfies each one
The page currently ranking first describes its entries by “core strength” and “best for”, which are descriptions rather than criteria: nothing can fail them. Each of these names the type of evidence that would satisfy it, so you can apply them to any firm, including us.
1. A price band that survives the firm's own pages
The figures on page one disagree by five to ten times, and at least one firm disagrees with itself across two of its own URLs. A band is only useful if it is the same band everywhere the firm publishes it.
Evidence that satisfies it: A published figure, cross-checked against every other page on the same site that quotes one.
2. A named practitioner who owns the deliverable
Firm-level claims survive staff turnover; a named person with a credential does not, which is exactly why naming one is a commitment.
Evidence that satisfies it: A named practitioner, ideally with a certificate number you can verify against the issuing body's register rather than a badge image.
3. A client-confirmed case study, not a logo wall
Logos show that a relationship may have existed. They do not show what was delivered, over what period, or whether it worked.
Evidence that satisfies it: A case study with a named or consented client, the scope, and an outcome the client has agreed to have published.
4. A stated position on what the firm cannot do
There is no DPDP certificate and no accredited DPDP certifier, so a firm that does not say so is either unaware or counting on you not knowing.
Evidence that satisfies it: An explicit statement on the site about certification, empanelment and legal advice, rather than silence.
5. Disclosed self-interest in any ranking it publishes
A ranking is not evidence about a market if its author is in it. It can still be useful, but only if the conflict is on the page.
Evidence that satisfies it: A visible statement that the publisher appears in its own ranking, and the criteria it used.
6. A date that holds up
The Rules were published in November 2025 and obligations commence on intervals running from it. A page reviewed before that is describing an earlier regime.
Evidence that satisfies it: A visible published-or-updated date, consistent with the content and with anything dated elsewhere on the page.
7. Legal, privacy-consulting and testing scope kept separate
A DPDP programme usually needs a privacy consultant and a security tester, and sometimes counsel. One firm presenting all three as one service leaves the buyer to find the gap later.
Evidence that satisfies it: The site says which of the three it is and what it does not do; a law-firm licence where legal advice is offered.
The comparison
What each firm on this search result actually evidences
Read on 22 October 2026. Rows are in the order the results appeared, not an order of our choosing, and carry no score — a single number would hide which criterion produced it, which is the problem with every ranking on this page. The last column is an absence of published evidence, not a judgement about anyone’s work: a thin page can belong to excellent practitioners, and it still means a buyer cannot check anything from it.
| Firm | What the page is | What it evidences | What it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualysec | A “top ten DPDP consultants in India” listicle, on which the publisher ranks itself first | A figure of ₹1.5 lakh to ₹4 lakh for a gap assessment, penalty figures, industry body and testing-scheme badges, and a rank-by-strength table. Updated 27 August 2026. | Case studies are linked rather than shown. The ranking does not state that its author appears in it, and “core strength” and “best for” are descriptions rather than scored criteria. |
| TCSA | A service page with an indicative price table, plus four sibling city listicles | Tiered figures of ₹1.5–2 lakh, ₹2–3 lakh and ₹3–4 lakh by headcount, a 12-to-16-week headline, an audit count, and two named auditors with stated credentials. Marked “last reviewed June 2026”. | No certificate numbers against those credentials. Its own enterprise tier states 16 to 24 weeks against the 12-to-16-week headline on the same page. The client logos carry no case study, and the quoted reviews are largely about other frameworks. |
| CyberSigma | A blog post serving as a service page | Figures of ₹3–5 lakh, ₹5–8 lakh and ₹8–15 lakh banded by organisation size. | No visible publication or review date, and no case study. |
| Digio | A platform guide rather than a consulting page | A 2026 date and a thorough explanation of the platform's own scope. | No price band and no consulting engagement described, which is consistent with it being a product rather than a firm you hire for a programme. |
| Carmatec | A short service page | Longevity and partner badges, and links to three review platforms. | No price band, no date beyond a footer year, and the linked review platforms are referenced without the ratings themselves being shown. |
| AMLEGALS | A law firm's service page | That it is a law firm, which matters here: it is the only result on this SERP that can give a legal opinion on the Act. | No price band and no date. It is not a privacy-consulting or testing provider. |
| GoodFirms (directory) | A directory profile, not a firm's own page | Partial hourly bands and a location for the listed firm. | Directory profiles are self-submitted. Three of the firms above cite profiles like this one as proof, which is a circular arrangement worth noticing. |
| SecureRoot | Service pages, a pricing page, and a cost guide | Guide ranges of under ₹50,000 a year, ₹1.5 lakh to ₹8 lakh and ₹15 lakh to ₹60 lakh with a 13-to-23-week programme; an explicit statement that no DPDP certificate exists, that we are not CERT-In empanelled, not an ISO certification body and not a law firm; and a dated cost page that cites its sources. | We fail our own second and third criteria: no practitioner is named on this page, and no client-confirmed case study or sample deliverable is published. Both are set out below rather than left out of the table. |
We fail two of our own criteria, which is the row worth reading if you are deciding whether to trust the rest of this page. No practitioner is named here, because individual names came off our service pages in October 2026 and nothing has carried them since. And no client-confirmed case study or sample deliverable is published, because none has been cleared for publication — inventing one would make this page worthless.
People also ask
How much does DPDP compliance consulting cost in India?
The figures on this search result differ by five to ten times, which looks like chaos and mostly is not. They are pricing different things. Once you name the scope behind each number the spread largely explains itself, and what is left is a real disagreement worth asking about.
| The figure | Who publishes it | What it appears to buy |
|---|---|---|
| ₹1.5 lakh to ₹4 lakh | Qualysec's listicle, updated 27 August 2026 | A gap assessment, which is one phase. It is not a programme, and the page says as much. |
| ₹1.5 lakh to ₹4 lakh, tiered by headcount | TCSA's service page, marked last reviewed June 2026 | An end-to-end engagement at the small end of the market. Headcount is the variable, which is the part worth questioning: it is not what the work scales with. |
| ₹3 lakh to ₹15 lakh by organisation size | CyberSigma's page, undated | An end-to-end engagement across a wider range of organisation sizes. The top of this band and the top of TCSA's differ by roughly four times for work described in similar terms. |
| Hourly bands | A GoodFirms directory profile | Nothing comparable. An hourly rate without an estimate of hours cannot be compared to a project fee, which is why directory bands are the least useful figure on this SERP. |
Our own guide ranges, and what drives them, are set out in full on our DPDP compliance cost page, which also separates the one-time project from the annual run-rate and lists what is not in the fee. The short version: headcount is the wrong variable, and the five things that do move the number are the ones to bring to any scoping call.
What you already hold
How the DPDP Act maps onto the regimes you already answer to
No page on this search result does this, and for a regulated firm it is the first question: what can we reuse? A great deal, as it turns out — but not the privacy duties, which is the part every security framework leaves untouched.
| What you already hold | What it covers for DPDP | What it does not |
|---|---|---|
| RBI directions on IT governance and cyber security | Access control, encryption, logging, vendor and outsourcing diligence, and incident governance. A regulated entity that already satisfies these has much of the DPDP Act's reasonable security safeguards evidenced. | Notice, consent meeting the Act's standard, data-principal rights workflows, children's data and retention limits. These are privacy duties and no security framework discharges them. |
| SEBI's cyber security and cyber resilience framework | Much the same control ground for market intermediaries, including governance, logging and third-party risk. | The same gap. It also does not address a data principal's right to correction or erasure, which has no analogue in a resilience framework. |
| IRDAI information and cyber security guidelines | Control design and incident process for insurers and intermediaries, with policy documentation that can usually be extended rather than rewritten. | Consent and notice for the extensive personal data an insurer processes, and the processor terms that have to flow down to every intermediary. |
| CERT-In directions on incident reporting | Incident detection, the escalation path and log retention. If you can already report an incident to CERT-In, you have the internal machinery a DPDP breach intimation needs. | They are a different obligation with a different and much shorter clock, measured from a different trigger, and reporting to CERT-In does not discharge the DPDP duty. Rule 7 of the DPDP Rules requires a description to the Board without delay and the particulars within seventy-two hours of becoming aware, or within such longer period as the Board may allow on a written request, plus intimation to each affected data principal without delay. Read both instruments; one does not satisfy the other. |
| ISO 27701, privacy information management | The closest fit of any of these. Its controls map onto most of the Act's privacy duties, and a certified management system is strong evidence of them. | It is a certification against a standard, not compliance with Indian law, and the certificate comes from an accredited certification body rather than from a consultant. SecureRoot is not an accredited ISO certification body. |
SecureRoot is not a CPA firm and does not issue SOC 2 reports; a licensed CPA firm does. Where buyers stack frameworks, the overlap is genuinely worth scoping together — our gap analysis starts from what you already hold rather than from a blank template, and DPDP Act security testing covers the evidence side. SecureRoot is not a CERT-In empanelled auditing organisation.
People also ask
What is the deadline for DPDP compliance?
There is no single deadline, and the way this is usually written is slightly wrong in a way worth correcting. The DPDP Rules state commencement as intervals running from publication, not as calendar dates — the two dates everyone quotes do not appear in the gazette text at all. They are consequences of the publication date, and the arithmetic is sound, but the rule and the interval are the thing to cite. Read them in the Act and the Rules themselves.
On publication, which was 13 November 2025
Rules 1, 2 and 17 to 21 came into force on the date of publication in the Official Gazette.
One year after publication, so 13 November 2026
Rule 4, the registration and obligations of a Consent Manager. The gazette states the interval; the date is its consequence.
Eighteen months after publication, so 13 May 2027
Rules 3 and 5 to 16, and 22 and 23 — the bulk of the operative duties. Again an interval, not a date in the text.
The Consent Manager deadline guide covers the one-year interval in detail, and the compliance checklist sets the obligations out in the order a programme meets them.
Two things nobody states
There is no DPDP certificate, and nobody can take your liability
There is no DPDP certification scheme and no accredited DPDP certifier, so no firm — SecureRoot included — can certify DPDP compliance.
This matters while you are comparing firms, because a proposal priced for getting you “DPDP certified” is priced for something that does not exist. What you can hold is demonstrable readiness: evidence that your notices, consent, rights workflows, safeguards, retention and breach process meet the Act and the Rules, in a form an enterprise buyer’s diligence or the Board would accept.
The DPDP Act places its duties on the data fiduciary. No engagement with us, and no virtual DPO arrangement, transfers that statutory liability to us.
A virtual or fractional Data Protection Officer is a real and often sensible arrangement, and it does not move the duty either. Any firm offering to carry your statutory liability is describing something the Act does not permit, and that deserves more scrutiny than its price does. SecureRoot is not an accredited ISO certification body; certificates come from the certification body. SecureRoot is not a law firm and does not give legal opinions on the DPDP Act.
Our guide to who can sign your security report sets out which signatures exist across the frameworks buyers ask about, and which nobody can give.
Where we are the wrong choice
Five situations where you should not hire us
You need a legal opinion on the Act, a filing, or representation before the Data Protection Board.
Instruct a law firm — the one on this list can do that and we cannot. We work alongside your counsel and brief them on the technical facts.
You want a certificate to show a customer.
Nobody can issue one for the DPDP Act. If a certificate is genuinely what your customer wants, ISO 27701 is the certification that covers this ground, and an accredited certification body issues it.
A tender requires a CERT-In empanelled auditor's signature.
Engage an empanelled organisation for that signature. We will tell you on the call whether your requirement actually needs one, because often it does not.
You want the statutory liability to sit with your vendor.
It cannot. Any firm offering to carry it is describing something the Act does not permit, and that is worth more scrutiny than a price.
You want a single flat fee for “full DPDP compliance” without scoping.
Anyone quoting that without seeing your data flows is guessing. We price by phase, which is slower to agree and harder to sell.
Questions
The rest of what buyers ask
- What does a DPDP consultant actually do?
- Six things, and it is worth knowing which of them you are buying. Data discovery and flow mapping, which is finding every system, vendor and backup that holds personal data. A gap assessment of what you hold against the Act and the 2025 Rules. Consent and notice design, which is both the wording and the mechanics across every surface you run. Rights workflows, so an access, correction or erasure request can actually be served end to end. Processor terms and vendor diligence. And a breach procedure that has been rehearsed rather than merely written. What a consultant does not do is assume your liability: the Act places the duty on the data fiduciary, which is you, and no engagement moves it. A proposal that implies otherwise is selling something it cannot deliver.
- How long does a DPDP implementation take?
- Our published guide range is thirteen to twenty-three weeks for a full programme at startup or SME scale, with large groups quoted by phase rather than against one clock. The figures on this search result page cluster in a similar region, with one firm headlining twelve to sixteen weeks while its own enterprise tier states sixteen to twenty-four on the same page, which is a useful reminder to read past the headline. What moves the duration is not headcount: it is how many systems hold personal data, how many processors touch it, whether data crosses a border, how many consent surfaces you run, and whether a rights pipeline already exists. A gap assessment is the short end of that work and the only reliable way to find out which of those apply to you before committing to a timeline.
- Do startups need a consultant, or can we self-implement?
- A small startup with one or two systems and no cross-border processing can genuinely do much of this itself, and one of the guides on this search result page puts in-house delivery under ₹50,000 for a sub-ten-thousand-user firm against vendor quotes an order of magnitude higher. For a simple product that is credible. What transfers well internally is data discovery, vendor record-keeping and keeping the inventory current, because your own team knows the systems. What usually does not is the first gap assessment, where knowing what a regulator reads for is most of the value, and consent design across several surfaces. The honest split for most companies is outside help for the assessment and the design, and your own people for the run-rate. If a consultant will not tell you which parts you should keep, that is informative.
If you are shortlisting for Delhi NCR specifically, our sourced comparison of DPDP consultants in Delhi NCR covers a different set of firms on the same method, and the DPDP Act service page describes the phases we actually run.