What good is Make in India, if it's not Made for India?

Here's a small exercise: make a list of companies that you consider as true innovators. Once done, read through, and be surprised that none of the Indian behemoths found their name on that list.

Maybe a few ‘startups’ would - the consumer tech biggies, the SaaS giants maybe. But other than that, the list would be pretty sparse.

And that’s because in India, value trumps innovation.

As long as something is given at the cheapest possible price (or something of similar measure as a minimum or maximum), people will be happy. Does it work perfectly every time? Does it do more than it is expected to? Can I rely on it? Who cares, as long as I can get it off the shelves. That’s what most businesses in India seem to think, and how many of them operate.

Let’s take India’s shining hope in the race for global economic domination - Reliance, as an example, who has been in the news over the last few days for their ‘revolutionary’ new offering JioMeet.

Quite obviously inspired by Zoom, this product seems to have done nothing more than changing a few words and thrown in a few add-ons for the sake of differentiation.

So what’s different about JioMeet? Here’s what I gather from their website.

• They are Indian-made. Drop the patriotism card. Check.
• They are secure. Drop the ‘everything is unsafe if it’s not hosted in india’ card. Check. (I wonder how many people even know what this means)
• It’s unlimited. Drop the ‘Value’ card. Check.

 And here’s what I gather from their press releases.

•  Unlimited call duration for free. Zoom offers 40 minutes on their basic plan.
• 100 Participants. Zoom offers the same + 500 participants in one of their upgraded plans.
•  Up to 5 devices to log in from. Zoom offers 3.
• HD audio and video quality. Ok then.

Their UI, well, it's pretty much identical. Except maybe a few words changed for the sake of.

So, again, what’s different enough about JioMeet for me to shift? Zilch.

To some though, and I’m seeing this narrative quite a lot, Jio has apparently pulled off a marketing master stroke, because since people are so familiar with Zoom, and so shifting to this will be seamless (and of course, your allegiances will never come into question).

This is where the Make In India battlecry breaks down, because essentially all they are doing is playing up to the gallery, while offering nothing of real substance, except that it is Made In India.

Sure, we can argue about the employment it generates, helps the economy and all of that, but that happens regardless, no matter where the company is from. As long as they run a clean operation, there’s no worry there. And that’s no excuse for the blatant lack of even bothering.

The big question is why aren’t products MADE FOR INDIA? Ones that actually solve a problem that India faces today. Whether it’s a tech solution, a non-tech solution, a tech enhancement, whatever, isn’t it simply lip service until it actually solves something that actually matters?

Isn't that the only way India will actually be able to compete on the world stage, and become the superpower it actually wishes to become?

But why pick on Reliance?

Because it’s Reliance. No, I didn't get fired from there, nor do I have some personal vendetta against the A's. It’s because Reliance is as big and as Indian as it gets today. And that gives them the power to lead the way. To set the new rules. To be the beacon for younger, smaller companies and encourage them to start taking risks in the name of innovation. Or better yet, integrate these companies into their portfolio and create an ecosystem. Instead, they are simply promoting and celebrating the sense of 'This is Enough'. Just like they have with almost all of their offerings.

The fact that they can do anything they want, get away with it, and still make it successful means that they could have done many simple, and many extraordinary things with this product. Like how about:

• Bandwidth optimization to match Indian internet speeds, and allows one to have a glitch-free video call at lower speeds, as it is so in many areas across the country?
• Vernacular UIs that opens up a whole new audience, like small regional businesses to the power of Video conferencing and connecting them to the world?
• A stripped down version that caters to senior citizens, or kids, with larger buttons and easier guided usage (YT kids, anyone?), given that so many parents are living away from their kids with no chance of seeing them anytime soon, and with schools moving into online learning rapidly?

These are just some of the basic feature requests I could share with the JioMeets team, if I ever had a chance, but given the collective brain power sitting in their offices, they could think of 10X this and more - they could have literally changed the way the world approached Video Calling!

Instead, the simply chose to be a rip-off. And believe that people will be happy with it.

Unfortunately, people are. And there died the need to innovate.

Several Indian companies continue to operate on a “let me make a cheaper version of something that exists, not a better version”. Until that changes, Make In India becomes nothing more than a symbol of pseudo-patriotism shared on Whatsapp or Facebook.

Let's hope the next Jio-something (JioLearn? JioFood? JioSpace?) is done with better use to the resources they have.