Is India Really the Vishwaguru of the IT Sector? No, it’s a Joke!
A critical look at India's position in hardware, software, AI, cloud computing, and global innovation.
One thing I have been listening to for at least a decade, if not ages, is that India is now a global leader in IT. They portray an image of India such that, when it comes to the IT sector, it is the most sought-after country in the world. And no, it's not just the naive who believe this. Even seasoned industry professionals with decades of experience believe that India is the next superpower in the IT industry.
But let’s wake up and open our eyes! See, personally, I don’t have an issue if someone is happy believing fairy tales. I know daydreaming is not a crime, and one has the right to be under an illusion (and one should, if it makes one happy without causing any harm), but let’s do ourselves a favour by being a little honest and asking ourselves: Is India really an IT superpower?
Shall we first start by exploring what “IT” actually is?
Well, when we think of the IT sector (or the IT industry), the first picture that comes to mind is of cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, or Pune, where hundreds of young professionals with lanyards around their necks are rushing through traffic all the time.
BUT, let me be clear: these cities (and the companies within them) hardly represent a fraction of the actual IT sector. IT industry is not just what we see there. In fact, The IT sector includes Hardware Devices, Operating Systems, Cloud Computing, Software, Artificial Intelligence, and the kind of software that end users actually use.
And in none of these areas does the alleged superpower have even a single leading company.
Which Indian IT company’s product do you actually use?
Take Hardware Devices, for example. The world’s biggest hardware companies- Apple, IBM, Dell, and many others-are not Indian. In fact, most of them get their products manufactured in our dear neighbour, China (which our ultra-nationalist pat’riots’ believe we will defeat by sharing social media posts about boycotting its products), not India.
When it comes to Operating Systems, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence, if not centuries, it will take India at least several decades just to get anywhere close to the United States. And by the time we get there, America will have moved even further ahead.
We don’t have a single IT company whose products are used by ordinary people around the world. Think about it yourself-which Indian IT company’s product do you actually use?
And no, I’m not talking about Indian apps like Zomato or Ola that simply use an app to provide some other service. I’m talking about IT companies. Zomato and Ola are not IT companies.
THE Brutal Fact!
Every Indian who uses the Internet, a smartphone, or a computer is, in one way or another, using hardware, software, or AI built by American companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Meta.
So why on earth do we boast that we are an IT superpower? A broken belief hurts more than a broken bone, so this may hurt you too if you enjoy living under delusions. But to be brutally honest, the only thing we truly excel at is IT services-or, to be more precise, labor. Yes, LABOR!
Labors Don’t Rule the Market
Let’s take an example! Imagine a massive marketplace with 100 shops, generating trillions of dollars in business.
Out of those 100 shops, 90 belong to the United States, 4 or 5 belong to China, another 4 or 5 belong to Europe, and perhaps one tiny shop belongs to India.
Now imagine that this marketplace employs 100,000 workers, and 99,000 of them happen to be Indians-not because they are more skilled, but because their cost-to-skill ratio is much lower. In other words, you pay far less for an Indian worker than for an American worker with the same or only slightly less skills. For example, an Indian laborer will do the work with 80% of the quality of an American laborer for just 10% or 20% of the cost.
Would you call India the king of that marketplace simply because 99% of the workers are Indian-and that too only because they are cheaper, not more skilled than others?
Of course NOT. The king of that marketplace is the United States, because it owns 90% of the shops. That’s exactly what’s happening here. The only thing we truly lead the world in is cheap labor.
What actually they prefer Indian companies for?
An average Software Engineer in the United States earns roughly ₹1.25 crore per year, whereas in India the average is only around ₹10–12 lakh. And yes, I said average.
That’s precisely why large IT companies outsource software development to India. They aren’t coming here because we lead the world in technology. They come because we provide engineers with skill levels not much lower than theirs at a fraction of the cost.
And that’s what we call being an IT superpower.
But the truth is, apart from cheap labor, we are far behind in almost every other area of the IT sector. Forget the United States-we are faaaa…r behind China as well.
What China did?
Instead of depending on American technology, China built its own alternatives. It has its own Google-like search engine (Baidu), its own maps (Baidu Maps, Amap), its own video platforms like YouTube and Netflix (Bilibili, Youku, Tencent Video, iQIYI), its own payment apps (AliPay), its own messaging apps like WhatsApp (WeChat), and its own social media platforms (Weibo).
Even in Artificial Intelligence, China now has its own ChatGPT-like models, such as DeepSeek.
And then there’s Huawei. Just five or six years ago, the company was blacklisted by the Trump administration. Yet today, it has managed to develop AI chips in China that many analysts consider competitive with-or, in some cases, even better suited for certain AI workloads than-NVIDIA’s offerings. But that’s a discussion for another day.
What can we do?
For now, all I would say is that we have only two choices:
The first is to keep patting ourselves on the back for providing cheap labor to American companies and continue living happily inside our own bubble.
To solve a problem, at the very least, we have to accept that there is a problem.
The second is to acknowledge where we actually stand in the IT sector. To solve a problem, at the very least, we have to accept that there is a problem. If we genuinely want India to become an IT superpower someday, the first step is to stop pretending that we already are. We still have a very long way to go.