The rise of Indian IT & our “Amrit Kaal”

The rise of Indian IT

To my mind, the major changes started occurring just before and after the economic liberalization the country went through (1991). Till then there was no urgent need by anybody to do any fantastic development. The IT revolution began with the establishment of great companies like TCS. But the tempo picked up when Nasscom came into existence. It was an amazing thing hardly seen anywhere in the world where competing companies came together and co-operated. It was one of the reasons for phenomenal growth.

GenAI: Rapid development in India

Use of AI-ML in practically everything that you do has now become a cliché. Luckily for us, the development in AI, although of recent origin in India, has been quite rapid. If you take most of the important areas like healthcare, financial systems, etc, company after company is attempting to incorporate AI-ML in many of their decision-making activities. 

But to me the most important indicator is the growth of startups. The number of AI startups, specifically in GenAI, have rapidly increased from around 60+ last year to 260. They are all building on LLMs. If you look at the work that they are doing and the eagerness of the Indian companies to extract useful work from them, I think we are on the right path.

We have an extraordinary thing only matched by China: A very large pool of talented people. In the coming years the GenAI bucket will feed the entire world, not just India. 

Looking at the road ahead

"Products" has been a low-key phenomenon even in IT. We are known all over the world for our great prowess in providing services, not so much as products. In IT, we have the best design houses in the world, but we design circuits for the rest of the world. We have the best textile manufacturing, but we manufacture for the top brands of the world.

Coming to the financial sector, you will notice that a substantial portion of banking systems products have been developed in India. Whether it was FNS which was ultimately bought by TCS and spread across the complete State Bank of India infrastructure, or whether it was Infosys Finacle which started in India but now serves many global banks across the world. I believe that over the next 10-15 years, you will find products which will start moving across the world just as a few products in the financial sector have done. 

The R&D desire in Indian industry has been a recent phenomenon. Surely over the next years and decades, it will match the substantial investments needed. Till then the government should take that responsibility. 

I’m sure that in the period which we call Amrit Kaal (a golden era), leading to the centenary of the Independence of our proud independent nation, we should do something substantial to catch up.

Check out the complete interview…

Our GenAI bucket can feed the world

India Stack can power the world

(Dr Phatak till last year was Chairperson of the IIT Indore Board of Governors. He has been involved with many projects that took India forward like those related to banking smart cards and PoS terminals, the Aakash tablet, an aircraft maintenance training simulator that helped make projects like the HAL Tejas fighter plane a reality. He received the Dataquest Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.)