It was a week after Independence day in 2017; a startup founder friend had hit upon a great idea: micro-loans for those without a credit history, tapping unrelated data such as mobile recharges. Over chilled beer, his startup team came up with what all they could do with bank statements. Was privacy an issue, I asked. Oh no, this was for the user’s benefit, so she’d be happy to share bills and statements and, anyway, India had no privacy law.
