Akash leads Panag & Babu’s corporate and regulatory advisory and telecom, technology & privacy
practices. Through the course of his career, Akash has assisted several multinational companies including banks and financial institutions to navigate India’s data privacy regulations and for responding to data leaks or cybersecurity incidents. He works closely with credit rating agencies, life-sciences, and pharma giants, software service providers, intermediaries, messaging platforms, peer to peer lending platforms and online marketplaces to structure consent frameworks that are compliant with Indian law.
Akash also assists with transactional privacy-related challenges arising out acquisitions and business transfers, such as those relating to migration or acquisition of customer data, as well as analytical data based on underlying personal information. He has also advised clients on bespoke queries specific to challenges arising in the banking, airline, hospitality, and healthcare sectors.
In the past, Akash has advised on a wide range of privacy issues associated with the fintech sector, such as payment data localization, handling of know-your-customer data, banking secrecy, big-data analytics, anonymization, establishing consent frameworks to enable transfer and use of customer data, cybersecurity incident management, and responding to queries and audit requests from regulators.
Akash regularly writes on intermediary liability, data privacy and the regulation of emerging technologies. Before joining the Law Offices of Panag & Babu, Akash worked at Veritas Legal in Mumbai, where he helped establish the Firm’s data privacy and fintech practices, and at AZB & Partners, Mumbai.
Clients have said that Akash is “commercially driven, with an intuitive understanding of how regulation impacts complex tech-products in India. He adopts a risk-based approach advising on legal and regulatory issues at the intersection of law and technology”
