By Yashi Bairagi
The bells rang on Wall Street and marked the biggest milestone for a startup going public, shattering all the conceivable market expectations by reaching as high as $2.28 trillion, while the target was almost massive in the neighborhood of $1.77 Trillion. Elon Musk’s wealth now soars more than the GDP of 174 nations, commenting himself as the greatest entrepreneur and innovator alive, JP Morgan Chase CEO went to even say that he is Edison and Einstein combined.
SpaceX is only 1 pillar of a much larger, transformative empire, waiting in the wings is, Neuralink, Elon’s next big bold of having Brain-computer interface, as humanity comes closer to having a AGI. This is posed to be the next billions-dollars juggernaut if not trillions. Changing the definition of what it means to be an ambitious innovator.
West, Europe and much of China, Japan and South Korea are littered with examples of grand successes, whereas India stands just following footsteps of what is already happening, creating a better copy of something, nothing new from scratch. For the past 2 decades, the world is divided into 2 groups : The application layer one and the foundational layer one, India has triumphed in the former without a doubt, becoming the IT back-office of the world, having consumer tech, Fintech and e-commerce unicorns. However, in the realm of foundational technology, the one which needs deep, capital-intensive science that deals fundamentally with how we live, travel and compute, India has lagged behind Japan, South Korea, European counterparts, let alone talking about China and the US.
The US is driven by entrepreneurial visionaries like Musk and China startups have aggressive backing of the government, both nations are locking down the future. They are dominating in aerospace, advanced semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and bio-engineering, (our proposed chips plants and quantum infrastructure in quantum valley are just outer layers, we don’t have any underlying IP or tech). Even if those proposed initiatives come to fore as intended, it will give us some jobs and market gimmicks, nothing fundamental.
No country can claim true technological sovereignty or capture the highest form of global wealth without owning the foundational tech. India’s heavy reliance on the entire tech stack of the US and China, leaves us in grave misery. Zoho’s CEO Shridhar Vembu has alarmed the bells a myriad of times for Indian people in the US and talented people in India to make India self-reliant.
This is a wake-up call for us for foundational technology and science.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor, Commerce Department, Advance College, Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh)
