As India’s startups race to build AI-first products, the way they handle personal data could decide what those companies are eventually worth.

Speaking at TechSparks 2026, YourStory’s annual flagship summit, Shivaarti Bajaj, Founding Managing Partner of RSD Bajaj Global Law Firm, argued that privacy can no longer be an afterthought. Founders, she said, are not just shipping products but creating assets: assets that can be valued, bought, sold, devalued, or even taken away if they are not built and complied with correctly.

“When we are creating products, we are creating companies, an asset,” Bajaj said.

Intellectual property remains the first line of defence. Trademarks protect the brands that D2C companies are building, patents matter for deep tech innovation, and copyrights and design protection cover creators, semiconductors, and IoT hardware. But Bajaj noted that IP law in India is well established. The newer and less understood risk lies in the data sets companies collect and create.

To illustrate the stakes, she pointed to Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo’s operating business. The deal was originally agreed at $4.83 billion, but after Yahoo disclosed two major data breaches, the price was cut by $350 million, and Verizon took on a share of the related litigation.

Buyers and investors, Bajaj said, now factor remediation costs into pricing. Whether a company is in D2C, edtech, deep tech, or AI, it can expect a valuation discount if it has no data map, cannot prove consent, works with vendors who handle data without contracts, or has no breach response plan.

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