India's e-signature framework rests on the Information Technology Act 2000, substantially amended in 2008, alongside the general contract-law backbone of the Indian Contract Act 1872. Electronic evidence admissibility now runs through the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023, which replaced the old Evidence Act's Section 65B with a stricter certification requirement from 1 July 2024.

The IT Act recognizes signatures on two tracks. Section 3 covers 'digital signatures': asymmetric cryptography tied to a Digital Signature Certificate issued by a Certifying Authority licensed by the Controller of Certifying Authorities. Section 3A, inserted by the 2008 amendment, covers 'electronic signatures' more broadly: any technique the Second Schedule recognizes as reliable, including Aadhaar-based eSign, plus a general reliability test for techniques not specifically listed. That test asks whether the signature is uniquely linked to the signatory, created under their sole control, and whether any later change to the signature or the signed record would be detectable, criteria that read almost identically to the EU's advanced-electronic-signature standard, despite India never adopting eIDAS vocabulary.

Neither a Digital Signature Certificate nor Aadhaar eSign is available to an unlicensed foreign platform. DSC issuance requires CCA licensing as a Certifying Authority. Aadhaar's authentication API is restricted to entities simultaneously recognized under the anti-money-laundering law and registered with UIDAI as a KUA or Sub-KUA, a closed list of mostly regulated financial and government entities. None of that matters for ordinary commercial signing, though. Section 3A's general reliability test, combined with Section 5's signature recognition and Section 10A's validation of electronic contract formation, is the same legal path DocuSign, Adobe Sign, and Zoho Sign already operate under in India, and it's the path a tamper-evident, audit-trailed platform like Firma.dev satisfies without any domestic license.

Exclusions are narrow and named rather than broad. The First Schedule bars electronic execution of negotiable instruments other than cheques, powers of attorney, trust deeds, and wills, though a 2022 amendment narrowed the first two exclusions to exempt instruments involving RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, or PFRDA-regulated entities. Property sale and conveyance contracts lost their IT Act exclusion the same year, though the separate Registration Act 1908 still requires in-person registration for compulsorily registrable instruments in most states, so the practical barrier for real estate outlives the legal one that used to justify it.

For most SaaS companies and B2B platforms operating in India, the general reliable-signature standard covers commercial contracts, employment agreements, NDAs, software licenses, and insurance e-proposals with confidence. A Digital Signature Certificate or Aadhaar eSign matters for government filings, specific regulated financial-sector KYC flows, and the small list of First Schedule exclusions, not for standard business documents.