Dr. V. Sridhar (IIIT-Bangalore, India) – “My data or yours?”: Unravelling Multi-Party Privacy (MPP) amongst Consumers of Digital Credit in India
Tuesday, March 25th, 2025
Join us for a special ARNIC seminar on 3/25 at 5:00PM PT led by Dr. V. Sridhar titled “My data or yours?”: Unravelling Multi-Party Privacy (MPP) amongst Consumers of Digital Credit in India
About the Talk
India has witnessed exponential growth in digital financial innovation. Digital credit, which forms a subset of digital financial services, has been advocated as the next best alternative to the traditional forms of lending practised by the financial institutions. A large number of start-ups have started providing digital lending services on their own or mediate between borrowers and lenders to facilitate minimal collateral loans. These lending firms use “alternate data” often collected from users with or without explicit consent, to rank the credit worthiness of the potential borrowers in the absence of financial collaterals. It is in this context that this project analyses the data protection and privacy concerns of the digital borrowers, especially on the connotations of “Multi-Party Privacy” (MPP). We use a combination of research methodologies including controlled lab experiments, a large survey of digital borrowers, and interview with digital lending platforms. We find that the awareness about MPP is very low amongst the borrowers. While the lending platforms offer undeniable benefits, they also pose significant privacy and data protection risks at various levels, especially due to the collection and processing of alternate data. During our interactions with the users, a consistent theme emerged regarding the prevalence of fraud associated with digital financial services apps and digital lending platforms that presents a concerning picture of the current state of digital financial ecosystems in India. While the data protection act and associated regulations have placed restraints on collecting alternate data by the digital lending platforms, it also has the effect of curbing its penetration amongst the needy.
This project was funded by the Digital Credit Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley
About the Speaker
Dr. V. Sridhar is Professor at the Centre for IT and Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B), India. He is the author of three books: Two with Oxford University Press and one with Springer. His fourth book on “5G and Beyond: Rewiring Telecom Regulation in India” has been accepted for publication by the Oxford University Press. Dr. Sridhar has taught at many Institutions in the USA, Finland, New Zealand and India. He was also a visiting scholar at Aalto University, Finland and was the recipient of Nokia Visiting Fellowship. In the past three years, he has been a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA and Kogod School of Business, American University, Washington DC, USA. He has been a member of Government of India committees on Telecom and IT and also has industry experience in the communication industry. He has written more than 350 articles in prominent business newspapers and magazines relating to telecom regulation and policy in India. He has received funding from different sources, both national and international for his research projects. Dr Sridhar has a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, U.S.A. His work can be accessed at: http://www.vsridhar.info
RSVP to arnic@usc.edu by Friday 3/21 for details on location