Chasing Tech Sovereignty: Can India Build Its Own Tech Empire?

[Renegade]

Really liked this article: https://www.outlookbusiness.com/mag...tal-empires-india-must-chase-tech-sovereignty

So, here's the gist: the world is witnessing a trend when it comes to geopolitics and tech. Its not so much about armies and tanks anymore; wars are going digital, powered by chips and algorithms. Hello, Hezbollah.

India is sitting on a data goldmine but relying way too much on tech from other countries, especially China. Not ideal, right?

Remember the 80s? India was making its own computers and electronics. But after the 90s, when we opened up to the global market and signed WTO’s ITA-1 agreement, local brands fizzled out. Meanwhile, China played it smart—built its tech base first, then signed the deal. Fast forward to today, and while India is assembling phones and exporting them, we're only scratching the surface of the tech value chain.

Big problem: we don’t design or own the critical stuff like chips or software IPs. Most of our top talent either moves abroad to work on cutting-edge tech or gets absorbed into global giants via GCCs. On top of that, deep-tech startups here struggle for funding and end up flipping to the US.

The government is trying to change the game with a $50 billion push into areas like AI, quantum computing, and EVs. But let’s face it, we need to invest way more in R&D and support startups if we want to dominate global markets and secure our tech sovereignty.

Discussion:
Do you think India’s approach to tech sovereignty—assemble now and innovate later—can ever compete with giants like China or the US? Are we going at the right pace for setting up fabrication units, will we have all the raw material to be self sufficient. What would it take to create a thriving ecosystem for deep-tech and homegrown innovation? Let’s hear your thoughts!

 

[Emperor]

1. We should work for 72 hrs. in a MONTH and soon will reach near to Developed Countries.
2. Infect if work 72hrs. a YEAR and that too from home than just in 10 yrs. will top all Developed Countries.

To hell with assembling, we will start innovation by just following above 2 points.
cheers (imported)

 

[soulweaver]

As always, what follows is an opinion. And like every other opinion - cheap, personal, and by and in itself, not worth a dime - like a religion without followers.

I think it should start with education and attitude. I have lived in/worked in about 11 states in India and 7 countries, and worked with people from several more, and taught people from 14 countries, and by far, the biggest difference I have seen is the attitude towards learning new things. Along with the chalta hai attitude, most of us lack the desire for finesse in doing things.

From carpentry to painting to vehicle repair. We try to do the bare minimum that will work, and do not worry about making it great or making it awesome. We do not want to take the additional pain. Yes, there are pockets where people are doing this in India, but as a culture we frown upon it and generally do not bother with this.

This attitude has become a fabric of everything we do. We hire teachers that 'work' rather than teachers who can be role models, we have exam systems that indicate that you are as good as your marks while frowning upon extra-curriculars and intellectual pursuits. We do not encourage creativity. Unless this changes, we will not progress much.

 

[anony]

What would it take to create a thriving ecosystem for deep-tech and homegrown innovation? Let’s hear your thoughts!

1. Equal oppurtunities based on talent and not reservations. I'm all for income based reservations which would actually help the poor but not caste or religion based.
2. Need to eliminate corrupt babus and politicians who are an obstacle (An actual PITA). You need to bribe so many people just to do a good thing which would actually create value for the society.
3. Fear of Law and faith in Justice.

I have a few friends who got scholarships in US universities and ended up doing cutting edge research in AI. They themselves said had they stayed here in India, they would be working as a corporate slave and nothing more.

The government is trying to change the game with a $50 billion push into areas like AI, quantum computing, and EVs.

The government has a lot of money and they invest it into a lot of good things. But the tragedy is that on every level, you'll find someone siphoning off the funds. Realistically, you can imagine how much of that $50 billion will actually go to the innovators or researchers.

The day WE eliminate corruption and reward our own citizens with better Quality of Life is when we'll be top of the world. I'm not saying that the US isn't corrupt. It is on many levels but if you are pursuing a PhD there, do you face the issues caused by the corruption? Is it something you'll face in daily walks of life? Those are the questions you need to ask.

Before people come at me saying this thread should be apolitical, please come out into the real world and think whether you would prefer research in India or the US and THE REASON BEHIND IT.

I'm sorry if this is not the answer people are looking for and I offended anyone. Also, I'm not anti-national LMAO. I don't mind if this reply gets deleted and I would love to be proven wrong about everything I've written.

I would like to end with a thought provoking quote I read somewhere as a child.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” - Stephen Jay Gould

Our biggest strength is our population (Yes it has its cons I'm well aware of). But just imagine if we collectively focused on building things and solving problems as a whole, the sky is the limit for us.
Instead, I see the next generation focusing more on going viral on the internet. I went to my school recently as an alumni and after conversing with my old teachers, the situation seemed quite bleak.
(I would like to reiterate that not all the kids are into it. Just the majority.)

I don't blame the kids. I know that social media is entirely responsible for this. It does seem apt that "brain rot" was the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024.
But society has failed when influencers and celebrities on the internet are receiving more money as part of sponsorships than the grants that a PhD scholar gets while working hard on research.

I genuinely apologise if what I said has gone off topic but this is just my opinion on what we would need to do to create a thriving ecosystem for research and innovation.

 

[ibose]

Population.. solve this first and rest will automatically follow..

 

[Renegade]

The day WE eliminate corruption and reward our own citizens with better Quality of Life is when we'll be top of the world. I'm not saying that the US isn't corrupt. It is on many levels but if you are pursuing a PhD there, do you face the issues caused by the corruption? Is it something you'll face in daily walks of life? Those are the questions you need to ask.

Our biggest strength is our population (Yes it has its cons I'm well aware of). But just imagine if we collectively focused on building things and solving problems as a whole, the sky is the limit for us.
Instead, I see the next generation focusing more on going viral on the internet. I went to my school recently as an alumni and after conversing with my old teachers, the situation seemed quite bleak.

You make some very good points.

Research spending constraints however could be due to the fact that we spend 0.5% of GDP on research and not due to corruption? Or rather its the scarcity which is causing the corruption in allocation of budget. Sorry I am not sure how research projects are allocated and budgeted. However what from I have learnt from my friend who had worked in DRDO for a fea years, that most decisions are delayed and there is decision paralysis which slows things down considerably.

I also agree that population can be our biggest strength, but the points above by @soulweaver probably explains why its not happening. The channeling of talent with sufficient encouragement by a role model is missing. We end up finding and celebrating the 'Jugaad' but how many of those Jugaad are mass replicated.

The culture in organizations also matters a lot. Like for instance, Google, if it cannot scale up an idea to the whole world, they drop it. They are taught to think 'planet scale", thats the phrase they use internally to evaluate everything. They give an idea chunks of 3 months to work on and evaluate if it deserves another 3 months after working on it for those 3 months.

 

[desi_gamer]

Full time Electrical Engineer here (and a part time UPSC aspirant). I can answer this with both technical and historical perspectives, while leaving politics aside.

Remember the 80s? India was making its own computers and electronics. But after the 90s, when we opened up to the global market and signed WTO’s ITA-1 agreement, local brands fizzled out. Meanwhile, China played it smart—built its tech base first, then signed the deal. Fast forward to today, and while India is assembling phones and exporting them, we're only scratching the surface of the tech value chain.

This is a gross oversimplification. India was barely keeping it together during the 80s. There were several missteps during these early phases:

1. Reinventing the wheel: In 1966, the committee led by Dr. Homi Bhabha recommended that India should focus on developing its own computer technology rather than relying on imports. While this decision was rooted in a desire for self-reliance, it ultimately proved to be a significant setback. It isolated us from global technological advancements and led to exit of key players like IBM from India in 1978.
2. Government Control and Bureaucracy: There was (and still is to some extent) excessive government control over the computer industry. The establishment of Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) as the primary computer manufacturer led to bureaucratic inefficiencies and a lack of market-driven innovation.
3. Missed Opportunities: India missed an early opportunity to capitalise on its software development potential. While countries like the US were making significant strides in software, India remained focused on hardware development, which was already becoming commoditised. Though it was fixed later in 1991 reforms when we gave tax breaks to software exports.

Big problem: we don’t design or own the critical stuff like chips or software IPs. Most of our top talent either moves abroad to work on cutting-edge tech or gets absorbed into global giants via GCCs. On top of that, deep-tech startups here struggle for funding and end up flipping to the US.

This again is only partially true. India houses approximately 20% of the world’s semiconductor design engineers. It's just that the country lacks the capability to fabricate these chips domestically. Our top talent works for the global giants, simply because they have access to the fabs. Yes there are proprietary software IPs used by these giants, but the open source versions are good enough if you want to start your own designing firm.

As a result, we spend 21 Billion USD annually on semiconductor imports which we domestically design. Setting up domestic fabs will cost 10x more, assuming we even get access to IP in the first place, which is much much more difficult than setting up factories. Which brings me to the gist of this discussion - are we doing enough?

Do you think India’s approach to tech sovereignty—assemble now and innovate later—can ever compete with giants like China or the US? Are we going at the right pace for setting up fabrication units, will we have all the raw material to be self sufficient. What would it take to create a thriving ecosystem for deep-tech and homegrown innovation? Let’s hear your thoughts!

We are a “late latecomer” in the semiconductor sector. Yes I purposely used "late" twice. Secondly, while still better than us, China's indigenous companies like HiSilicon and Unisoc are not global giants. The market is dominated by ASML (Netherlands) and TSMC (Taiwan). It will take years of R&D and innovation to even think about competing with these companies. Right now what we need, apart from the obvious, is:

1. Embracing new designs: The rise of System-on-Chip (SoC) designs has had a significant impact on both costs and complexity in the semiconductor industry. What's good is this mostly doesn't need cutting edge lithography machines - even a 28nm node is sufficient. India needs to spend/invest to acquire some of these machines, reverse engineer them, and use it as a starting point. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.
2. Skilled Labor: Even though we have an abundance of cheap labour, they aren't trained to work in these fabs. We need entirely new curriculums and pathways to impart these skills in next generation of workers.
3. Geopolitics: As the world shifts away from China, we need to come off as a viable alternative. The entire south east asia is our competitor. It's important that we stay neutral and be prepared with enough bartering chips to emerge as the most viable prospect to set up shops.

 

[blr_p]

Do you think India’s approach to tech sovereignty—assemble now and innovate later—can ever compete with giants like China or the US?

That's how all eastern Asian countries started

Are we going at the right pace for setting up fabrication units, will we have all the raw material to be self sufficient.

Can do better always applies but if we compare where we were twenty years ago or even ten there are tangible gains.

What would it take to create a thriving ecosystem for deep-tech and homegrown innovation? Let’s hear your thoughts!

A continuous focus that spans numerous governments. This has to be a bipartisan issue.

 

[Futureized]

India is sitting on a data goldmine but relying way too much on tech from other countries, especially China. Not ideal, right?

China for Tech, its restricted to Hardware if correct ?

 

[w.ilyas]

Competing with US or China? Well we have to get in line as many countries are way ahead of us in those terms. The brain drain never really stopped but actually gained traction so there is no going back now. The approach should be to focus on our strong points like medicine and invest in larger cheaper medical care so us a nation can become much healthier and safer. The second strong point is basic education and empowering government schools and bring them to private infra levels. While IITs and IIMs are still going strong the alumni usually prefer a comfortable risk free life after getting out, which kind of makes sense as they worked hard to get in. Without risk there is no success, and here is where the government should come in again to provide a safer haven in terms of accessible infrastructure so even if we fail, the road has not ended.