After Amazon, Xiaomi to transfer data on local servers in India

After the government stiffened its stand towards data localization, foreign-headquartered tech players are falling in line and setting up data servers in India.

Chinese phone manufacturer Xiaomi is the latest player which is migrating its Indian data to cloud service providers Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure with infrastructure in India.

According to the company, it has already begun storing data of new users in local servers from July 1. Besides, all existing user data on mi.com/in/ will be fully migrated to servers in India by mid-September 2018.

Xiaomi said that with the data stored locally and encrypted end to end, users will be able to enjoy greater access speeds.

Till now, all Indian user data used was stored in AWS servers across Singapore and the United States.

Xiaomi describes the move as a step towards user data security and privacy, which is the utmost important for the company.

Recently, the Indian government asked Amazon to set up local servers in the country. The government believes the move will check unbridled cross-border migration of data without users’ consent.

According to the government, localisation of servers in India and having an element of consent of Indians is important for usage (analytics) of the data.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is also asking for data localisation to fintech players. A few months ago, the RBI directed all payment players to ensure data related to payment system be stored inside the country within six months.

Besides, fintech platform Paytm is also lobbying hard for data localisation. Paytm had earlier said that no payment firm should be allowed to launch services in India if it does not have local servers in the country.

Experts, however, feel that the data localisation will increase the operational cost for Amazon and others; may also impact the ability of the company to engage in hardcore analytics and mine user information effectively.

The development was first reported by ET.