A European board carries two non-negotiables into every market: a GDPR-trained view of personal data, and an ESG and supply-chain due-diligence obligation that reaches all the way down the chain. India does not run on the GDPR adequacy model, and your CSRD report needs an Indian feed. We build for both from day one.
A German company thinks in GDPR terms; a French or Dutch board thinks in CSRD and supply-chain due-diligence terms. India’s DPDPA reaches similar ends through a consent-and-fiduciary model rather than adequacy, and its ESG disclosure runs through SEBI’s BRSR rather than the CSRD. We translate your existing obligations into the Indian instruments that satisfy them.
Entry into India is not a single transaction; it is a sequence of interlocking legal decisions where each choice constrains the next. We run all six under one roof so the structure, the compliance and the contracts never contradict each other.
A Netherlands, Luxembourg or other EU holding company over an Indian wholly-owned subsidiary — structured to survive the MLI principal-purpose test and India’s anti-avoidance scrutiny. The layer has to earn its treaty position through real substance.
We map your GDPR roles and records onto India’s Data Fiduciary and Data Processor concepts, rebuild consent for the Indian model, and prepare for Significant Data Fiduciary obligations — DPO, audits and impact assessments — where they apply.
India is not on the EU adequacy list, so EU→India transfers need their own mechanism, and India’s own DPDPA transfer regime works by a negative list rather than adequacy — the inverse of the GDPR logic. We engineer intra-group flows lawful in both directions.
Your Indian operation and Indian suppliers feed your CSRD report and your CSDDD human-rights and environmental due-diligence obligations. We align Indian operations and contracts to that reporting chain, including SEBI’s BRSR where listed-entity data is involved.
The India–Netherlands, India–Germany and India–France treaties, read through the Multilateral Instrument’s principal-purpose test and beneficial-ownership requirements. We structure flows and substance so the treaty benefit is defensible, not assumed.
European boards expect works-council and co-determination norms that Indian law does not replicate. We translate those expectations into India’s four Labour Codes — standing orders, contract labour, and the consultation rights that do exist.
Each stage hands clean inputs to the next. The structure decision drives the incorporation; the incorporation drives the licensing; the licensing drives the compliance calendar that keeps you audit-proof.
Inventory the GDPR, CSRD and CSDDD duties that follow you into India and identify the Indian instrument for each.
EU holding alignment, entity choice and treaty position built to survive the MLI principal-purpose test.
FEMA pricing, FDI route, sectoral approvals and the data-transfer mechanism for both directions.
Constitutional documents, DPDPA consent and processing terms, supplier ESG clauses and IP.
Day-2 counsel across data, labour codes, transfer pricing and the Indian feed into your group reporting.
Under the GDPR, a transfer to India needs a mechanism because India is not “adequate.” Under India’s own DPDPA, the logic flips: cross-border transfer is permitted unless the destination is restricted by notification. European groups have to hold both ideas at once — satisfy the EU outbound requirement and the Indian inbound regime — for the same data flow.
Short, direct, on the record.
You use a transfer mechanism — in practice, Standard Contractual Clauses with a transfer impact assessment and any supplementary measures the assessment requires. That handles the EU outbound obligation. Separately, India’s DPDPA governs the data once it arrives, and its transfer rule works by a negative list rather than adequacy. We engineer the flow to satisfy both the EU exit requirement and the Indian inbound regime for the same dataset.
Yes — that is the point of the CSRD and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Your Indian subsidiary and your Indian supply chain feed your group sustainability report and your human-rights and environmental due-diligence duty. We embed the right contractual clauses, audit rights and data flows into your Indian operations and supplier agreements, and align with SEBI’s BRSR where listed-entity data is in scope.
Usually yes, and often sensibly — but the treaty benefit is no longer automatic. The Multilateral Instrument layered a principal-purpose test and beneficial-ownership requirements onto the India–Netherlands and similar treaties, and India will look through a holding layer that exists only for tax. The structure works when the holdco carries genuine commercial substance. We assess and document that substance up front.
Same destination, different road. The DPDPA uses Data Fiduciary and Data Processor roles that broadly echo controller and processor, and it centres on consent and notice — but it does not replicate the GDPR’s full lawful-basis menu, its adequacy model, or all of its data-subject rights in the same form. A GDPR program gives you discipline and documentation to build on; it does not give you DPDPA compliance off the shelf.
Not in the European form. India does not have statutory co-determination or works councils as Germany or the Netherlands know them. Its four Labour Codes provide for standing orders, registered unions, contract-labour regulation and certain consultation and notice rights. We translate your governance expectations into the Indian instruments that exist — and flag where a European norm simply has no Indian equivalent.
European groups keep treating EU→India transfer as a one-sided problem. It is two regimes pointing in opposite directions at the same packet of data.
The supply-chain directive does not stop at the EU border. Your Indian suppliers are already in scope; the only question is whether your contracts know it.
Post-MLI, a treaty layer without substance is a liability, not an efficiency. The principal-purpose test is now the first question, not the last.
The European entries that work are the ones designed around the obligations the board already carries — not the ones that discover them after go-live.