India's ineptness in technology?

[rpant_gabba]

"Likes of you"? You are name calling and insulting instead of trying to refute/respond my assertion, especially when I did not hurl any personal insult towards you.

What do you for a living If I may ask? I promise to write a post addressing your question right after.

If I may guess, is it a bean counter? accountant? Auditor?

 

[rickroll]

What do you for a living If I may ask? I promise to write a post addressing your question right after.

If I may guess, is it a bean counter? accountant? Auditor?

I'm not sure why what I do for a living matters instead of just addressing my question. Even if I choose to bite at this taunt -- perhaps answer what you do for a living first?

No, you may not guess what I do for a living. Not just because you are wildly inaccurate but you are also making assumptions based on your subjective bias+hatred and not based on the content of my post in this thread, which makes your assumption senseless.

Instead of trading insults or personal attacks, perhaps just engage in a valid discourse and answer my points especially when I'm openly admitting that I will change my opinion if presented with compelling facts? Or is it that you can only hurl insults and not engage in a reasonable discussion?

 

[Theanonymousone]

India had 27 years to become at least a known global entity for tech product based growth (be it software or hardware). But it has never happened ... why not? What did India lack despite investments, educational institutions, and IT workforce? Why did they never manage to jump that chasm between IT services and tech products in 27 years?

I think this is a far-fetched thing. IT revolution began on early 2000’s with much of 90’s barely having talent pool to work with. What started as a typical call center / operator jobs took 1-2 decades to move into actual value-added IT services.

India had 27 years to become at least a known global entity for tech product based growth (be it software or hardware). But it has never happened ... why not? What did India lack despite investments, educational institutions, and IT workforce? Why did they never manage to jump that chasm between IT services and tech products in 27 years?

India has decent tech products even today but we are directly competing with the US if we look at this from a product perspective. IT at the end of the day serves businesses which the Indian domestic market barely had in early 2000-10’s.

1. Today, India has one of the best FinTech products globally which is under-recognized. You are largely focusing on players like FAANG which are too big to compete but India produced some very good FinTech products (Paytm, Phonepay, Zerodha, GROW etc) which primarily serve domestic market. There is even no parallel if we compare the volumes they are able to handle currently with other Asia nations / West.
2. Our e-commerce players are no less than Alibaba product wise but the only difference is the presence of Chinese manufacturers which get recognized in the US. The quick-commerce products are as updated as any similar product in the US.
3. EdTech products are gradually expanding to MENA and upGrad is available in the US too.
4. Where we actually lag is the native social media apps. Jio has made the internet low-of cost in 2015-16 and that is the market shift. By, then penetration of US apps has become huge and entry barriers have become too big. I don't think we will see much activity in this space in the future too.
5. SaaS has producer mixed results as IT companies such as TCS, Wipro have produced some decent low-cost solutions which are customized but not universal. Zoho has picked up really well in its ERP solutions and with Indian government providing much required scale, it will be a key players in the next 4-5 years.

The true IT penetration happened 2015-25 with value-added services. So, its not as if India had some head-start. We struggled with Capital availability before. Overall, we did decently but not anything groundbreaking with overall B+ performance. We may not see universal products but customized solutions is what Indian startups are targeting currently.

Now your IT services bread and butter is at risk of being taken away due to agentic AI replacements. This can drastically hit the cashflows. Ramping up a new industry growth needs CapEx (capital expenditures) and traditionally unless the govt wants to spend its money to boost up a private sector industry (rare) then this CapEx comes from retained earnings thru cashflow. But if the cashflow is compromised then the ability to do this CapEx is also compromised. I do see other views regarding the growth of GCC centers in India and as a reason the cashflow may not be compromised but with the rise of agentic AI based solutions, GCC centers may also be slowed in the future.

The GCC centers are basically the core operations bases. Their growth is faster than ever growing at 20-25% in 2025. Only Hyderabad received 35+ fortune 500 GCCs and most of these roles are core-functions and not some support systems which India IT firms such as TCS/Wipro did. We never know the complete impact of AI but what I see in the market is quality of jobs improved while quantity may get affected. This makes it even tougher for them to move out of India as it is the only country that offers both cost and quality. Obviously GCC trend is not perpetual but once, it reaches certain level, India will have 10-15% of operational bases of most global MNCs which is equivalent to a structural integration of Indian workforce

 

[Bhaag Viru Bhaag]

"Likes of you"? You are name calling and insulting instead of trying to refute/respond my assertion, especially when I did not hurl any personal insult towards you.

This is what he does when he gets cornered. He drives a taxi in Canada but acts as if he owns a chain of restaurants there.

 

[rickroll]

I think this is a far-fetched thing. IT revolution began on early 2000’s with much of 90’s barely having talent pool to work with. What started as a typical call center / operator jobs took 1-2 decades to move into actual value-added IT services.

India has decent tech products even today but we are directly competing with the US if we look at this from a product perspective. IT at the end of the day serves businesses which the Indian domestic market barely had in early 2000-10’s.

1. Today, India has one of the best FinTech products globally which is under-recognized. You are largely focusing on players like FAANG which are too big to compete but India produced some very good FinTech products (Paytm, Phonepay, Zerodha, GROW etc) which primarily serve domestic market. There is even no parallel if we compare the volumes they are able to handle currently with other Asia nations / West.
2. Our e-commerce players are no less than Alibaba product wise but the only difference is the presence of Chinese manufacturers which get recognized in the US. The quick-commerce products are as updated as any similar product in the US.
3. EdTech products are gradually expanding to MENA and upGrad is available in the US too.
4. Where we actually lag is the native social media apps. Jio has made the internet low-of cost in 2015-16 and that is the market shift. By, then penetration of US apps has become huge and entry barriers have become too big. I don't think we will see much activity in this space in the future too.
5. SaaS has producer mixed results as IT companies such as TCS, Wipro have produced some decent low-cost solutions which are customized but not universal. Zoho has picked up really well in its ERP solutions and with Indian government providing much required scale, it will be a key players in the next 4-5 years.

The true IT penetration happened 2015-25 with value-added services. So, its not as if India had some head-start. We struggled with Capital availability before. Overall, we did decently but not anything groundbreaking with overall B+ performance. We may not see universal products but customized solutions is what Indian startups are targeting currently.

The GCC centers are basically the core operations bases. Their growth is faster than ever growing at 20-25% in 2025. Only Hyderabad received 35+ fortune 500 GCCs and most of these roles are core-functions and not some support systems which India IT firms such as TCS/Wipro did. We never know the complete impact of AI but what I see in the market is quality of jobs improved while quantity may get affected. This makes it even tougher for them to move out of India as it is the only country that offers both cost and quality. Obviously GCC trend is not perpetual but once, it reaches certain level, India will have 10-15% of operational bases of most global MNCs which is equivalent to a structural integration of Indian workforce

Finally a good answer and thank you for that! I will read through this again and post my response. Just an FYI - if I disagree or push back on some of these points with my assertions, it does not mean I'm trying to troll, please do not think so.

 

[sweep_shot]

Modi's Semiconductor Boasts Mocked: No Clean Water, Yet Dreaming Big!​

India can't match China, your semi conductor failed in the 1980's, at that point was your best opportunity, now China, Taiwan, Usa are farr too ahead / advanced for india to competitive never ind catching to any of these countries:


Made in China 2025
Launched: 2015
Status: 86% success rate
Examples: Chinese EVs, DeepSeek, smartphones, shipbuilding, rare-earths, bio-tech, pharmaceuticals, robotics, semiconductors

Make in India Launched: 2014
Status: Failed
Example: Goals of increasing india's manufacturing share of GDP from 17% to 25% unrealised. Instead, it decreased to 13% of GDP by 2024

China focuses on actual growth. They focus on things which matter.

India is all about gimmicks and showing off.

This is why the gap is so huge.

 

[Theanonymousone]

China focuses on actual growth. They focus on things which matter.

India is all about gimmicks and showing off.

This is why the gap is so huge.

Only if you could have cared so much about your country.

What has Bangladesh achieved BTW?

 

[rickroll]

I think this is a far-fetched thing. IT revolution began on early 2000’s with much of 90’s barely having talent pool to work with. What started as a typical call center / operator jobs took 1-2 decades to move into actual value-added IT services.

India has decent tech products even today but we are directly competing with the US if we look at this from a product perspective. IT at the end of the day serves businesses which the Indian domestic market barely had in early 2000-10’s.

1. Today, India has one of the best FinTech products globally which is under-recognized. You are largely focusing on players like FAANG which are too big to compete but India produced some very good FinTech products (Paytm, Phonepay, Zerodha, GROW etc) which primarily serve domestic market. There is even no parallel if we compare the volumes they are able to handle currently with other Asia nations / West.
2. Our e-commerce players are no less than Alibaba product wise but the only difference is the presence of Chinese manufacturers which get recognized in the US. The quick-commerce products are as updated as any similar product in the US.
3. EdTech products are gradually expanding to MENA and upGrad is available in the US too.
4. Where we actually lag is the native social media apps. Jio has made the internet low-of cost in 2015-16 and that is the market shift. By, then penetration of US apps has become huge and entry barriers have become too big. I don't think we will see much activity in this space in the future too.
5. SaaS has producer mixed results as IT companies such as TCS, Wipro have produced some decent low-cost solutions which are customized but not universal. Zoho has picked up really well in its ERP solutions and with Indian government providing much required scale, it will be a key players in the next 4-5 years.

The true IT penetration happened 2015-25 with value-added services. So, its not as if India had some head-start. We struggled with Capital availability before. Overall, we did decently but not anything groundbreaking with overall B+ performance. We may not see universal products but customized solutions is what Indian startups are targeting currently.

The GCC centers are basically the core operations bases. Their growth is faster than ever growing at 20-25% in 2025. Only Hyderabad received 35+ fortune 500 GCCs and most of these roles are core-functions and not some support systems which India IT firms such as TCS/Wipro did. We never know the complete impact of AI but what I see in the market is quality of jobs improved while quantity may get affected. This makes it even tougher for them to move out of India as it is the only country that offers both cost and quality. Obviously GCC trend is not perpetual but once, it reaches certain level, India will have 10-15% of operational bases of most global MNCs which is equivalent to a structural integration of Indian workforce

Beginning of Indian IT growth - I see where you are coming from. I based my point from the data below and in my mind 1998 seemed like the foundation for growth year but I could be wrong since this is my interpretation. From the data it seems like 2000-2001 was when the IT export revenue kickstarted into higher growth rate. So this still gives 25+ years of consistent growth in IT expot revenue?



Fintech products - True this and interestingly some of these were considered for growth investments or acquisitions as part of our Indian investment arm's PE portfolio. The reason I'm hesitant to consider these as globally competitive Indian Fintech products is because they operate (and were able to grow + flourish) due to an unfair regulatory moat. Meaning, these companies flourished and had less competition due to the regulatory constraints in the Indian financial system on foreign based entities. Isn't that the case?

e-Commerce - True. Chinese manufacturing capabilities aid Alibaba. Ecommerce in general is a manufacturing+logistics+tech play, not just pure tech based market entry dynamics.

EdTech - This is one space I have been monitoring since 2012, the early days of Khan Academy. If anything I was expecting some Indian firm's entry given English prevalence, cheap tutors to aid the services component of a software play but this never seemed to be the case. UpGrad seems to rely on tie ups with US institutions for degrees which is a much more expansive and expensive offering especially at a time when vocational degrees seem more popular than costly AI susceptible college degrees. Forget the equivalent of UpGrad, why didn't India have its home grown equivalents of Coursera/Udemy/Udacity etc? By 2012 they had the cheap tutor workforce, tech workflorce for solution building, platform access for products, access to capital etc?

Social media apps - I think this is understandable tbh. Barring ByteDance (creator of TikTok), it has been difficult to compete against the power and deep pockets of American social media giants when English is the playing field. The Russian and Chinese social media companies flourished due to language moats.

SaaS products - This is where there is a clear gap and makes one question why it is so. I think FreshWorks and Zoho seem to be the only globally competitive Indian SaaS products in all these years which to me is super puzzling. The tech stack for many SaaS products since its early days (2008+) was in Java/PHP and later periods (2011+) also had Python (Django frameworks), Ruby etc. All of these tech stacks also had a big overlap with the areas of work by Indian IT services companies. So the tech workforce with know-how to build a SaaS product was there yet it never happened. This ties into my above point about EdTech (an area of vertical SaaS). The cliche saying for guaranteed failure in silicon valley is "Build it and they will come" because nobody comes if you just build a product, you also have to build a market. Does this mean India (barring Zoho, FreshWorks) does not have skills for global market development even if there is workforce for product development? Why so? At the very least they could hire global resources for that exactly like how FreshWorks or Zoho did? Lack of Capital was not an issue as I show below.

Capital Availability - There has been sizable capital inflow in terms of VC investments since 2012 time period. Please see the graph below. Even in 2012 India had $3.1B with average deal size of $6.1M which is a massive amount of funding for an early stage Indian tech startup even at current CPI (consumer price index) of India. So considering India's annual inflation rate (7%) this becomes a phenomenally high capital boost in 2012.



AI - This is one of the areas that you did not address. Even as of 2021 VC money into India was $38.5B and it is only bigger now in 2025. The average VC investment into an Indian tech startup is north of $25M today, which is a lot of money considering Indian tech workforce expense. Yet as of today, there is no breakthrough tech in LLMs or Gen AI from India. ChatGPT launched in 2022 and we have had many use case specific LLMs today from US and China. All of the LLM research is pure math (linear algebra to be specific) and software engineering layered on top to solution the concept. India has had this know-how. India has also had capital inflow (see data above) for the compute expenses but yet there is no major AI related breakthroughs from India.

Semiconductor - This is understandable since it is highly capital intensive and there is a rampup runway of 5-6 years after you set up a chip fabrication. Perhaps India is at least 25-30 years away from creating its own competitive GPU/TPU type chips even if they start today.

True IT penetration between 2015-2025 -- Are you referring to MSP type solutions as opposed to one time project based revenue when you say value added services? Didn't India already have hosted solution offerings and higher margin services at the top of the solution stack (value added) since 2008 timeframe itself albeit not as high as today? I'm in private equity (not a VC) and I recall some of our portfolio companies in Pharma and Biotech having their entire BPO+tech stack taken over by Indian services giants (think one of the WITCH companies). In any case what is the correlation between value added IT solutions versus the prevalence of tech workforce + capital availability (the vital factors for home grown tech products)?

GCC - I like how you worded this -- Obviously GCC trend is not perpetual but once, it reaches certain level, India will have 10-15% of operational bases of most global MNCs which is equivalent to a structural integration of Indian workforce. Yes it is true but it is still lower margin services work that is increasingly vulnerable to agentic AI. What I mean here is that even f that 10-15% is not immediately threatened, the growth rate of that segment will only get slower and slower due to tech disruption so it is not a ling term growing segment, wouldn't you agree?

Mind you that regardless of all of my questions above, I do appreciate India for having uplifted some level of middle class segment through their services industries. None of the South Asian countries have managed to do this at this extent (adjusted for their respective populations) and I wish Pakistan had achieved this as well. But this being said, one cannot help but wonder that despite this start, India has been unable to kick it into the next gear for more scalable product based growth (with lower marginal costs). One has to wonder if this is due to governance issues, higher workforce churn culture (product orgs need more stable teams that do not quit often) or any other reasons.

 

[Theanonymousone]

From the data it seems like 2000-2001 was when the IT export revenue kickstarted into higher growth rate. So this still gives 25+ years of consistent growth in IT expot revenue?

Of the IT exports, Engineering and R&D (co-creation, R&D, IP development etc) mix was minuscule prior to 2015. It reached 8% in FY24. BPO and ITes services heavily dominated prior which may provide revenue but not the adequate jobs for emerging talent. Even today, BPO services have 30-40% margins. Its quality vs quantity.

I recall some of our portfolio companies in Pharma and Biotech having their entire BPO+tech stack taken over by Indian services giants (think one of the WITCH companies). In any case what is the correlation between value added IT solutions versus the prevalence of tech workforce + capital availability (the vital factors for home grown tech products)?

If we compare the growth to the service category, Indian IT ecosystem specialized in B2B services category. Even today TCS and Infosys have their own SaaS products which are market leading such as Finacle, BaNCS etc catering to Banks for example. This is quite an achievement and thats how TCS/Wipro/Infy continued to grow. Majority of our talent pool went through H1-B path and we didn't witness the innovation until ER&D services started to build in India.

AI - This is one of the areas that you did not address. Even as of 2021 VC money into India was $38.5B and it is only bigger now in 2025. The average VC investment into an Indian tech startup is north of $25M today, which is a lot of money considering Indian tech workforce expense. Yet as of today, there is no breakthrough tech in LLMs or Gen AI from India. ChatGPT launched in 2022 and we have had many use case specific LLMs today from US and China. All of the LLM research is pure math (linear algebra to be specific) and software engineering layered on top to solution the concept. India has had this know-how. India has also had capital inflow (see data above) for the compute expenses but yet there is no major AI related breakthroughs from India.

I will try to find the relevant article but number of Indians working in Y-combinator start-ups is pretty high. I understand having LLMs is more of pride these days but even if you see DeepSeek from where it started to where it is now, China is way behind the West with a multitude of factors include Chips, training data sets and immature launch is what looks like DeepSeek. Now, I am not discrediting it but I refuse to accept it as a standard when it is still yet to mark its presence. Two Indian LLMs are expected to be released in 2026, and even it lags behind, we are what 1-year behind China? Its a race to build the product we need but not a product just to showcase.

Semiconductor - This is understandable since it is highly capital intensive and there is a rampup runway of 5-6 years after you set up a chip fabrication. Perhaps India is at least 25-30 years away from creating its own competitive GPU/TPU type chips even if they start today.

Only Taiwan and US are ahead in Chips production and even China lags behind. India has a very good IP base for hardware coding and shouldn't be a problem once we scale up. Our first semi-con prod will be live in next 2 years and ~7 manufacturing units are set to be operational by 2030. I am not making tall claims but we would have no-issues making Chips for mobiles and tablets, but will be reliant on imports for AI-based.

What I mean here is that even f that 10-15% is not immediately threatened, the growth rate of that segment will only get slower and slower due to tech disruption so it is not a ling term growing segment, wouldn't you agree?

I agree that growth rate will be moderated. But understand that till now, Indians are working on say TCS payroll vs working on say Vanguard / Eli Lily payroll. We have Novartis core research happening in Hyderabad while Eli Lily’s Data science division is also based in Hyderabad. JPMC, Novartis, Google, Amazon etc will have ~10-15% of their workforce in India. Thats a structural dependency on core-operations. While they may be impact by AI, its more of a functional change than a structural shift taking these operations out of India. And its impact on talent ecosystem is very understated right now.

India has been unable to kick it into the next gear for more scalable product based growth (with lower marginal costs). One has to wonder if this is due to governance issues, higher workforce churn culture (product orgs need more stable teams that do not quit often) or any other reasons.

When people say Indian engineering colleges needs to train better, the reality is that 15-20 years back, there were jobs only for basic coding and our colleges followed them like a herd of sheep. Only when diverse opportunities are available does the talent grow, which happened only in the last 5-10 yrs. And Indian IT companies were also complacent. One of the core issue.

 

[CricVet]

What do you for a living If I may ask? I promise to write a post addressing your question right after.

If I may guess, is it a bean counter? accountant? Auditor?

You accused the person you are arguing with as a TROLL, and then trolling the person asking for source of income. You wanna be relevant, stop trolling yourself!

 

[rpant_gabba]

You accused the person you are arguing with as a TROLL, and then trolling the person asking for source of income. You wanna be relevant, stop trolling yourself!

Dude, that was a honest question. least troll post that I have ever made on PP.

 

[rickroll]

Of the IT exports, Engineering and R&D (co-creation, R&D, IP development etc) mix was minuscule prior to 2015. It reached 8% in FY24. BPO and ITes services heavily dominated prior which may provide revenue but not the adequate jobs for emerging talent. Even today, BPO services have 30-40% margins. Its quality vs quantity.

If we compare the growth to the service category, Indian IT ecosystem specialized in B2B services category. Even today TCS and Infosys have their own SaaS products which are market leading such as Finacle, BaNCS etc catering to Banks for example. This is quite an achievement and thats how TCS/Wipro/Infy continued to grow. Majority of our talent pool went through H1-B path and we didn't witness the innovation until ER&D services started to build in India.

I will try to find the relevant article but number of Indians working in Y-combinator start-ups is pretty high. I understand having LLMs is more of pride these days but even if you see DeepSeek from where it started to where it is now, China is way behind the West with a multitude of factors include Chips, training data sets and immature launch is what looks like DeepSeek. Now, I am not discrediting it but I refuse to accept it as a standard when it is still yet to mark its presence. Two Indian LLMs are expected to be released in 2026, and even it lags behind, we are what 1-year behind China? Its a race to build the product we need but not a product just to showcase.

Only Taiwan and US are ahead in Chips production and even China lags behind. India has a very good IP base for hardware coding and shouldn't be a problem once we scale up. Our first semi-con prod will be live in next 2 years and ~7 manufacturing units are set to be operational by 2030. I am not making tall claims but we would have no-issues making Chips for mobiles and tablets, but will be reliant on imports for AI-based.

I agree that growth rate will be moderated. But understand that till now, Indians are working on say TCS payroll vs working on say Vanguard / Eli Lily payroll. We have Novartis core research happening in Hyderabad while Eli Lily’s Data science division is also based in Hyderabad. JPMC, Novartis, Google, Amazon etc will have ~10-15% of their workforce in India. Thats a structural dependency on core-operations. While they may be impact by AI, its more of a functional change than a structural shift taking these operations out of India. And its impact on talent ecosystem is very understated right now.

When people say Indian engineering colleges needs to train better, the reality is that 15-20 years back, there were jobs only for basic coding and our colleges followed them like a herd of sheep. Only when diverse opportunities are available does the talent grow, which happened only in the last 5-10 yrs. And Indian IT companies were also complacent. One of the core issue.

Thank you for the good responses @Theanonymousone

 

[CricVet]

Dude, that was a honest question. least troll post that I have ever made on PP.

Haha...I am sure that was the LEAST :》