An Indian government panel is working towards data to only be stored within the country, panicking US tech giants over business disruption and inflation.

Currently, an array of Indian businesses are storing their data on cloud servers located outside the country, with “tens of thousands of customers” using Amazon’s cloud service platform AWS.

If the policy goes as planned, technology giants including Amazon and Microsoft will have to invest in the size and amount of data storage centres they have in India if they wish to pursue being cloud providers in the country.

The Indian government hopes the policy will make data more easily accessible in light of investigations.

According to the Co-Founder of Infosys, Kris Gopalakrishnan, a data protection regime is needed as India’s IT laws framework is “not sufficient for cloud computing”.

Nevertheless, according to a draft report, the Indian public cloud computing market is set to double to US$7billion by 2022.

The report also called for the government by 2022 to “establish a comprehensive data protection regime for digital communications that safeguard the privacy, autonomy and choice of individuals and facilitates India’s effective participation in the global digital economy.”

The Indian government is also working towards designing data storage requirements for digital payment companies and the e-commerce sector.

Written by Leah Alger