IBM's partnership with Airtel brought IBM Verify to Indian data centres for the first time. But deploying to India isn't just an infrastructure decision, it's a product one. Indian enterprises, regulators, and users had requirements no IAM platform had seriously addressed.

India's Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act created a legal framework for delegated consent - where a caregiver, a parent, or a corporate delegate can act on behalf of another person in a governed, auditable way. Indian customers also needed certainty that their data stays in India.

‍No existing design existed for this. Before a single screen, the domain itself needed to be built: the objects, the relationships, the permission model, the trust architecture. That's where I started.