The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is among the key global internet governance institutions responsible for the co-ordination and management of the domain name system (DNS). In preparation for the ICANN63 meeting in Spain, ICRIER organised two panel discussions that highlighted the challenges and opportunities in building a multilingual internet in India and the substantive issues to be deliberated at ICANN63. Speaking at the event, Rajat Kathuria, Director and Chief Executive, ICRIER, highlighted ICRIER’s growing involvement in the internet policy ecosystem that began with a research on the impact of telecommunications and mobile, and subsequently, the internet. He noted that though India adopted the mobile first approach, it has struggled with the rural-urban digital divide because an environment where access to the internet can be provided in local languages is poorly developed. The first discussion on the challenges and opportunities in building a multilingual internet in India was moderated by Samiran Gupta, Head of India, ICANN. The key speakers included Ashish Modi, Country Head, 81 L to R: Mithun Das, Sarika Gulyani, Samiran Gupta, Ashish Modi and Ritu Srivastava at the discussion on India’s Multilingual Internet and the Road to ICANN63 Corporate Affairs, Data Xgen Technologies, Ritu Srivastav, General Manager Research, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Sarika Gulyani, Director and Head ICT, Digital Economy & FICCI-ILIA Division, and Mithun Das, Vice President Sales, Reverie Technology. The panel noted the importance of preserving languages and cultures in an English dominated internet ecosystem and highlighted the immense business opportunity in developing linguistic content for the nearly 335 million users of Indic languages. At the same time, the challenges in indexing regional language content, online discoverability, and standardisation faced by many creators of regional language content were underlined by the panellists. This was followed by a focused discussion on the substantive issues expected to be deliberated at ICANN63. The discussion was moderated by Govind, Chair, ISOC-Delhi; key speakers included Rahul Gosain, Director, MEITY, Government of India, Amrita Choudhury, Director, CCAOI, and Jay Paudyal, Consultant, Neo-Brahmi Generation Panel, ICANN. The participants dwelt on the issue of new generic top level domains (New gTLDs) and discussed the opportunity in this context for local languages as well as the challenges of prohibitive costs and lack of awareness. The importance of the Whois database and the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation and other privacy legislations were also discussed. The panel highlighted the difficulty in developing ICANN policy, which has drawn support from all stakeholders in the process and complies with the laws of various jurisdictions.