Made in India

Since the late 90s, India's IT industry can be divided into three phases:

The flourishing of the IT service sector was ignited by the Y2K bug and the availability of cheap talent. After the Y2K situation, the world 'discovered' Indian IT talent and that they could get so much done at a fraction of the price they pay locally. Our service companies were there at the right time and at the right place to ride that wave and this sector exploded providing jobs to millions of Indians.

The next stage was when major product companies started shifting their core development work to India and they realised that India has genuine talent on par with the rest of the world and it's not just about cheap labour.

Currently, we are in the latest phase where Indians realised that we can actually build these kind of companies instead of working for them. This has been largely driven by our huge market and the proliferation of connectivity to even the remote places of the country.

The bourgeoning start-up culture in the country has led to some major paradigm shifts in the following sectors:

E-Commerce: Companies like Flipkart and Amazon have taken e-commerce to the nooks and corners of the country. It has provided employment and business opportunities to lakhs of people and also started something called as Gig economy.

Fintech: Fintech companies like Paytm have become a verb now. The hassle of providing small change for small purchases is a thing of the past with apps like Phonepe, Paytm and Google Pay. Policy bazaar made buying insurance cheaper and simpler.

Health-tech: The COVID pandemic accelerated telemedicine in the country and finding the doctor in your vicinity is a matter of a couple of clicks and medicines are delivered to your doorstep.

Ed-tech: Byjus, Unacademy has changed the way people look at acquiring new skills.

Is it safe to say, Indian technology companies and start-ups in particular are driving innovation in a major way? Well, hold on to that thought.

Let us revisit the four sectors I have spoken about earlier.

E-Commerce: Flipkart replicated in India what Amazon and other e-commerce companies did in the Western world for e-Commerce. Not exactly path-breaking.

Fintech: Paytm was just a pre-paid wallet not really a novel idea. Phonepe and Google Pay piggyback on the UPI backbone of the NPCI. Poilcy Bazaar is just a marketplace for buying insurance like any other market place, not much originality there.

Health-tech: Even here we replicated in India what was already available elsewhere. If Flipkart can deliver something, so can Pharmeasy deliver medicine. It was just a case of applying the e-com business model to medicines.

Ed-tech: Indian start-ups did not invent online education, it was again adapted to the Indian situation.

If our IT industry and the start-up ecosystem are not innovating, is anybody else driving path-breaking technologies in India? The answer is yes, there is an organisation that has given us products that even the most advanced countries haven't built. The answer may well surprise you. It is The Government of India (GoI).

Yes, you read it right. It is very easy to dismiss GoI as a bureaucratic, lazy, inefficient necessary evil but look at what GoI in terms of innovation has achieved.

1. UPI: UPI is the giant on whose shoulders companies like Phonepe, Paytm and Google Pay stand. It has transformed the way we make payments. With one scan of the code, and a few taps, you can pay for anything or transfer money to anybody. NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HAS THIS. UPI resulted from The government setting up the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in April 2009 with the core objective of consolidating and integrating service levels of various systems with different into a country-wide, uniform process for all retail payment systems.

2. Aadhar: Aadhaar is the world's largest biometric ID system. World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer described Aadhaar as "the most sophisticated ID programme in the world".The UIDAI was established on 28 January 2009 after the Planning Commission issued a notification. We all know about it and I wouldn't discuss it here.

3. One of the, if not the most underrated innovations of the GoI is the Electronic Voting Machines a.k.a EVMs. State-owned Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics developed the system for the Election Commission of India. Starting in the late 1990s, they were introduced in Indian elections in a phased manner. In the 2024 general elections, 642 million people voted and when the counting started, we had results in half a day. By 2 pm on the counting day, we knew the results. Such is the impact of this innovation. Again, no other country in the world can boast of this feat.

4. Space Tech: On Feb 14th, 2017, ISRO launched a record-setting 104 satellites on a single rocket. On 14th July 2023, Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon and India became the 1st country to touch down near the lunar south pole. This was done for $87 million less than the production cost of the movie Gravity which cost $100 million to make. Even deep-tech Indian companies like Map My India partners with ISRO for its catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data.

So, the next time when we discuss about the innovations coming out of India, let’s also give credit to where it’s due.