Scaling GRC in India: How organisations can stay ahead with federated, AI-powered compliance

With increasing cyber threats in India and the regulatory landscape tightening under frameworks like the DPDP Act and Indian IT Act, governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is now front and centre for enterprises, government agencies, and managed service providers (MSPs). But for organisations operating across business units, subsidiaries, or client portfolios, traditional GRC tools often fall short. Siloed systems, manual processes, and limited visibility make it difficult to scale—or meet India’s growing expectations around data sovereignty, cybersecurity, and regulatory alignment.

In this blog, we explore how a federated, AI-powered approach to GRC can help Indian organisations simplify compliance, improve oversight, and stay ahead of change.

The challenge of distributed compliance management

Whether you're overseeing multiple internal departments, a network of regulated subsidiaries, or delivering services to clients as an MSP, GRC complexity increases exponentially with scale.

Each entity often operates in its own silo, with unique risks, controls, workflows, and regulatory obligations, leading to:

• Inconsistent compliance practices across teams

• Duplication of effort and wasted resources

• Lack of visibility at the executive or oversight level

For Indian enterprises, government agencies, and MSPs managing sensitive data across entities, the stakes are even higher. You need to:

• Align each business unit to India’s evolving frameworks like the DPDP Act, Indian IT Act, and CERT-In guidelines

• Maintain visibility and control across distributed teams, clients, or regulated entities

• Balance centralised policy enforcement with local flexibility to adapt to operational or regulatory nuances

Gaps in oversight can result in audit failures, reputational damage, or non-compliance with sector-specific mandates. And without the right architecture in place, compliance programs can quickly become fragmented, inefficient, and expensive.

Why a federated model makes scaling compliance easier

A federated deployment model allows organisations to strike the right balance between centralised governance and local independence. With this approach, each business unit, department, or client can operate individually—while still aligning to enterprise-wide standards.

The 6clicks platform is built around this model, with its unique Hub & Spoke architecture that’s specifically designed for large enterprises, MSPs, and government bodies. It enables:

• Centralised control and localised autonomy 
  With 6clicks, you get a centralised Hub to oversee all entities or clients and deploy separate environments—called Spokes—where each can run their own risk and compliance activities independently, while staying connected to the Hub.

• Standardised best practices and content 
  From the Hub, you can standardise and distribute workflows, controls, assessment templates, and frameworks such as the DPDP Act, Indian IT Act, National Cyber Security Policy, and ISO 27001 across entities or clients, ensuring consistency while allowing local execution.

• Instant deployment with ready-to-use templates 
  Launch new Spokes quickly using pre-configured templates and content packs, perfect for accelerating implementation across departments, subsidiaries, or clients. No need to reinvent the wheel for each new framework or entity.

• Consolidated reporting and insights 
  Maintain real-time visibility across business units, regulated entities, or clients, with all reports rolled up at the Hub. Easily track compliance status and other key metrics with customisable dashboards and deliver leadership-ready insights with one-click report generation.

• Sovereign deployment with local hosting 
  Meet India’s data sovereignty and local compliance requirements with public, private, or dedicated hosting via the 6clicks India instance, built to support the needs of government, defence, and critical infrastructure sectors.

Supercharge GRC efficiency with AI automation

While federated deployment lays the foundation for scalable GRC, automation enables sustainable efficiency and long-term compliance. By embedding AI-powered automation across GRC workflows, organisations can transform traditional processes, reduce manual effort, and keep pace with India’s rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.

6clicks’ Hailey AI, the first AI engine purpose-built for GRC, empowers organisations with advanced automation, bringing next-level speed and accuracy to tasks that are traditionally time-consuming and error-prone. This includes:

• Multi-framework compliance: Automatically map and align requirements across multiple frameworks like ISO 27001, National Cyber Security Policy, and DPDP Act

• Control mapping and gap analysis: Map controls to specific framework provisions and determine compliance gaps within seconds

• Audit and assessment responses: Generate answers using previous data or uploaded documentation and complete entire questionnaires in a few clicks

• Risk and issue identification: Raise risks or compliance issues directly from assessments and automatically create and link corresponding records

• Risk treatment and issue remediation: Instantly create remediation tasks out of risks, issues, and incidents, aligned to organisational context and compliance requirements

By leveraging AI, risk and compliance teams can eliminate manual analysis and cut weeks off audits and regulatory tracking, regulated entities can achieve compliance faster, and MSPs can streamline service delivery.

Cut costs with one powerful, centralised GRC platform

Running GRC on multiple tools creates hidden costs, integration issues, and audit fatigue. By unifying your tech stack into one integrated platform, you can reduce overhead, streamline workflows, and support seamless, scalable growth.

Unlike other providers that charge per module, user, or framework, 6clicks gives you full functionality from day one, including unlimited users and content. Gain free access to an extensive built-in Content Library, featuring risk and issue libraries, policy and control sets, and official standards and regulations.

Meanwhile, pricing is based solely on the size of your organisation or the number of Spokes you need, delivering measurable cost savings and long-term value across diverse use cases:

• Enterprises – Leverage an all-in-one platform that combines risk management, compliance, vendor management, incident tracking, and audit readiness, lowering your total cost of ownership without sacrificing capability.

• Government departments and agencies – Shifting from inefficient legacy systems and disconnected tools allows government entities to maintain a single source of truth for all risk, compliance, and audit data, while also reducing resource hours and software spend.

• Advisors and MSPs – As a channel-first platform, 6clicks’ partner licensing model enables advisors and MSPs to easily transition from assessment-only services to ongoing managed services, giving the flexibility to support all types of engagements.

Whether your priorities are eliminating tool sprawl, improving process efficiency, or maximising client delivery, 6clicks helps you scale without bloating your costs.

TL;DR – Build a future-ready program tailored to India’s cyber landscape with federated, AI-powered solutions

Enterprises, government entities, and MSPs in India face increasing challenges in cybersecurity and compliance, making scalable, AI-powered GRC more critical than ever. Here’s how you can stay ahead:

✅ Tackle distributed GRC complexity with a federated model that balances central oversight with local autonomy

✅ Standardise compliance across entities or clients using templates and content aligned to India’s key frameworks

✅ Meet data sovereignty requirements with localised hosting and deployment options

✅ Eliminate manual effort, ensure consistency, and accelerate compliance with AI automation

✅ Drive long-term efficiency and cost savings with a full-stack cyber GRC platform and flexible, all-inclusive licensing

Achieving cyber resilience and ongoing compliance starts with the right technology foundation.

Get started with 6clicks

6clicks gives you the architecture, automation, and agility you need to scale with confidence. Get in touch with our experts below for a tailored walkthrough of our platform and solutions.