India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (the DPDP Act) and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 set out how businesses may handle people’s personal data. For a real-estate broker, the most important personal data is your buyers’: their names, phone numbers, budgets and what they told you.
Who is responsible: you are the Data Fiduciary
The Act calls the person who decides why and how personal data is used the Data Fiduciary. For your buyers’ data, that is you, the broker. A technology provider that processes the data on your instructions — such as a WhatsApp assistant — acts for you, but the responsibility for having a lawful basis stays with you.
Consent and purpose
Under the Act, consent must be free, specific, informed and unambiguous, given by a clear action, and as easy to withdraw as to give. In practice, a buyer who messages you about a 3 BHK has asked you to reply about that enquiry. That is not the same as agreeing to receive every new launch for the next year.
- Use data for the purpose it was given. Reply about the enquiry; don’t repurpose the number for unrelated promotions.
- Keep only what you need. Budget, timeline and preferences help you serve the buyer; documents and ID numbers rarely belong in a chat.
- Log consent. Record when and how the buyer contacted you and what they agreed to.
“STOP” has to mean stop
Withdrawing consent should be easy. If a buyer says stop, stop messaging them, and make sure your team and your tools respect it.
Grievances
People have the right to raise a grievance with the business that holds their data, and then with the Data Protection Board of India. Make it clear how a buyer can reach you.
How Meenira Realty helps
- It records a buyer’s own enquiry as consent for replies about that enquiry, with the purpose, channel and time.
- Enquiry consent expires 7 days after the buyer’s last message.
- Its first message says it is an AI assistant and how to stop; “STOP” withdraws all consents and no contact is allowed for at least 90 days.
- One broker’s data is never used for another broker’s assistant.
The full details are in the Meenira Realty privacy policy. See also how compliance works in the product.