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In a bold move of huge significance, OLA has announced that it will be moving its Rs 100 crore cloud business from Microsoft Azure to its own platform “Krutrim”.

Additionally OLA offers one year free cloud usage for any body else who want to shift from Azure to Krutrim.

Interested companies can contact exitazure@olakrutrim.com

The reason cited by Mr Bhavish Agarwal, CEO states that Microsoft AI on Linked In is trying to impose its political ideology on its users.

We appreciate the stand taken by OLA and urge other companies to explore and support the OLA initiative of avoiding dependence on Azure for their Cloud requirements.

We welcome comments from Cloud Experts .

Naavi

Refer:

Times of India: We dont need lectures from western companies..

https://chat.olakrutrim.com/home

Detailed post of Mr Bhavish Agarwal on the issue on his X account is reproduced here:

As an Indian institution, Ola is for genuine actions on diversity. We run one of the largest women only automotive plants. ot 1 out of 10 lines, or a small section, but the whole plant! Almost 5000 women now and will grow to tens of thousands in the coming years. And regarding gender inclusivity, we don’t need lectures from western companies on how to be inclusive. Our culture didn’t need pronouns to be inclusive for thousands of years. On a personal note, I had visited Ayodhya last year and learnt about how transgenders had been accorded special respect in our culture from ancient times! Here’s a short video from our national broadcaster DD on this – https://youtube.com/watch?v=goDQFIAZtt8…. On the other hand, the pronouns issue I wrote about is a woke political ideology of entitlement which doesn’t belong in India. I wouldn’t have waded into this debate but clearly Linkedin has presumed Indians need to have pronouns in our life, and that we can’t criticise it. They will bully us into agreeing with them or cancel us out. And if they can do this to me, I’m sure the average user stands no chance. As a founder and CEO, this western DEI system has a major impact on my business as it grows an entitlement mindset in our professional lives and I will fight it. This situation brings me to the need for us to build our own Indian tech platforms. I’m not against global tech companies. But as an Indian citizen, I feel concerned that my life will be governed by western Big Tech monopolies and we will be culturally subsumed as the above experience shows. This is not about Ola or any of my companies. Ola is too small to make any impact against this. I want to confront this forced ideology as a free thinking Indian and do what I can in my capacity. So here are the actions I’m taking. Putting my money where my mouth is. ⁃While we can’t do anything about Linkedin’s monopoly overnight, I’m making a commitment to work with the Indian developer community to build a DPI social media framework. DPIs like UPI, ONDC, Aadhaar etc are a uniquely Indian idea and is even more needed in the world of social media. The only “community guidelines” should be the Indian law. No corporate person should be able to decide what will be banned. Data should be owned by the creators instead of being owned by the corporates who make money using our data and then lecture us on “community guidelines”! ⁃Since LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and Ola is a big customer of Azure, we’ve decided to move our entire workload out of Azure to our own@Krutrim cloud within the next week. It is a challenge as all developers know, but my team is so charged up about doing this. ⁃Any other developer who wants to move out of Azure, we will offer a full year of free cloud usage. As long as you don’t go back to Azure after that! Mail us on exitazure@olakrutrim.com. Offer is perpetually open!

At a time India is debating the rules on DPDPA 023, an interesting controversy has arisen between RBI and the EU authorities regarding security trading by EU Banks in India.

Four EU banks namely, Credit Agricole, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, and BNP Paribas have sought RBI and ESMA (European Securities and Market Authority) to resolve the differences. The point of controversy is that ESMA wants a right to audit CCIL (Clearing Corporation of India) in order to allow the EU Banks invest in Indian securities through CCIL.

The Government of India has categorically refused any right to the EU authorities to exercise their jurisdiction on Indian organizations which are governed by the Indian regulatory agencies like RBI and SEBI. Way back in 2022 ESMA de-recognized the CCIL and in October 2024, these Banks need to stop investing through CCIL.

It is unlikely that Government of India is likely to yield to the request of ESMA even now.

According to the report in Business Standard the concerns revolve around client confidentiality, in the context of third-party clearing, especially for custodian banks tasked with holding securities on behalf of other financial entities.

Banks have now sought an extension of at least 6 months from their national regulators to provide extension of the current deadline.

It is stated that he challenge lies in reconciling client confidentiality requirements when clearing through a third-party bank instead of CCIL.

However, DPDPA 2023 provides for processing of data on a pseudonymisation basis which can be used to contain the risk of confidentiality with the Banks and not transfer it to the celaring agency. The clients are not Indians and hence the data belongs to non-Indians. Such data processing can also be notified as outside the scope of DPDPA 2023 through a notification.

Hence the issue is simple to resolve and if the Banks and RBI take into account the provisions of DPDPA 2023, there should be no reason to extend the controversy.

For the same reason, there is no reason for RBI to agree to the demand of ESMA to exercise audit rights on Indian organizations. This needs to be made clear to EU.

Naavi

Yesterday, Future Crime Research Foundation of Bangalore had organized a virtual conference on the topic “Is India Inc prepared for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023” in which Naavi participated as a speaker.

Naavi

To support the Mission DPDPA, our training partner iLet Solutions has offered a special discount of 30% on course prices for those who take the courses for the June 2024 batch before May 31 2024.

The coupon code to be used for this is FDPPIMAY2024. This will be available only for the first 5 claimants of the coupon benefits.

Use the following quick link to avail this benefit

FDPPI along with Naavi has embarked on a mission to spread DPDPA awareness amongst the public as well as professionals.

As part of this objective, FDPPI has revised its pricing strategy for the courses on Certified Data Protection Professional from the fixed Course fee payment to a time based subscription model.

The new scheme essentially enables those who are focussed on completing the course to complete the course on a fast track basis at a relatively low cost. Students can take subscriptions to different courses for a 2 month period which can be extended if required.

Further, students would be having the option to book “Mentor Sessions” where they will have a virtual real time interaction with the faculty to get clarifications after going through the video lessons.

In the past, since the access to the course modules was available for an indefinite period, there was no incentive to complete the course quicky and students tended to take upto 6 months for a course which they should normally complete within a month. The new system therefore fixes the subscription at 2 months which is extendable in blocks of further two months.

The two month subscription for different courses as a Self paced access are as follows: (GST Extra).

As a further commitment to spread the DPDPA professional knowledge and skills, every month, 5 students would be provided a discount of 30% over the above market price for first two months.

Additionally, for those who register for the courses before the rules are notified, one free virtual session of around 2 hours would be provided as a bridging session to update them on the rules.

Reading material would be provided in softcopy form for all the courses.

Examination and Certification

All participants will be provided participation certificate after they clock at least 90% of the video time for the course and a quiz.

Those who would like to opt for C.DPO.DA. certification need to pass an online examination. The examination fee for those who attend the C.DPO.DA. course as above would be Rs 10000/-

However open entry would be provided to professionals who may not undergo the training program at an examination fee of Rs 25000/-

Repeat examination fee would be Rs 6000/-

The passing of the examination would be based on a system of normalization and relative scoring. The decision of FDPPI in this regard is final and not subject to debate.

Naavi

The long awaited Exclusive Data Protection of law of India in the form of DPDPA 2023 was passed by the Parliament and gazetted by the President on 11th August 2023.

In current India, there is a tradition that every law passed by the legislature whether unanimously or with a majority, is to be validated by the Supreme Court and accordingly it would not be surprising if DPDPA 2023 is also challenged in the Court for the sake of ensuring that the Government does not do anything productive.

Naavi