1. Regulatory focus
TRAI's amendment establishes a specific, limited basis for commercial communications following a customer's inquiry about goods, products, or services: outreach under that basis is restricted to seven days from the inquiry, which must be made in writing or through digital means and retained by the sender in a verifiable form. The official explanation expressly identifies e-commerce and e-service platforms as intended beneficiaries of this route. This is not a universal seven-day validity period for every message; teams should assess OTP delivery, order fulfillment notices, and marketing supported by separately established consent under their respective applicable requirements rather than applying the inquiry exception indiscriminately. ([pib.gov.in](https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2311989&lang=1®=19))
2. Business impact
The seven-day limit makes lead-level expiry a practical control for inquiry-based campaigns, rather than allowing a CRM label such as previously contacted to serve indefinitely as the sending basis. Reassigning a lead or exporting it to another vendor does not create a new customer inquiry. ([pib.gov.in](https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2311989&lang=1®=19)) For operational review, prioritize day-eight discount reminders, dormant-inquiry reactivation campaigns, and recurring outsourced follow-up tasks, then inspect whether their SMS queues still use older audience snapshots. Keep inquiry-only eligibility separate from other independently validated sending grounds so that expired sales leads are suppressed without unnecessarily interrupting transactional workflows that have a different, documented compliance basis.
3. Operating recommendations
As an internal implementation measure, add inquiry timestamp, originating page, original request identifier, associated mobile number, follow-up purpose, and expiry timestamp to each lead record, with a reference to the underlying form submission or conversation evidence. Apply an eligibility check immediately before dispatch, and propagate expiry to scheduled SMS, outbound calling tasks, and vendor-held queues rather than merely changing a CRM label. Quarantine historical leads without supporting evidence from the inquiry-based workflow, and use expired-message suppression counts, missing-evidence rates, and vendor cancellation acknowledgments as internal acceptance metrics for testing whether the control works across the complete delivery chain.