Is India the next global tech hub?

Indian city of Bangalore is often referred to as the “Silicon Valley of India” because of its role as the nation’s largest information technology exporter.

Since a very long time, India’s best tech talents have been emigrating to the US in search of lucrative job opportunities. India-born engineers are leaders at Fortune 500 companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook to name a few.

On 22nd June 2020, US President Donald Trump shut the doors of his country to immigrant employees. This ban covers H1-B visas (specialty occupations such as tech jobs), L1 visas (intra-company transfers), H-2B visas (temporary non-agricultural workers), visas for dependents of immigrant workers, and J-1 visas (exchange students). 90% of H1-B visa applicants being Indians, this move will crush The American Dream of a lot of Indian engineers. The silver lining is that this ban can be viewed as a catalyst to entrepreneurial spirit.

Having banned 59 apps with links to China, the Government of India has announced the “Digital India Aatma Nirbhar Bharat Innovate Challenge” to identify the best homegrown apps and scale them to “world-class” standards. The ongoing pandemic has undoubtedly forced all nations to rethink globalisation and look inwards in order to make national economies self-reliant.

Few statistics to get you excited:

• The IMF has projected a positive GDP growth of 1.9% this year and 7.4% for the next financial year.
• India has improved its ranking in Global Innovation Index from 81 to 52 between 2015 and 2019.
• Since 25 years, India has delivered the highest return on equity in the world.
• India is the second most connected country in the world with 540 million internet users.
• India ranks third in terms of attracting investment for technology transactions.
• A recent survey shows that 33.33% of young people in India are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. This matters because 50% of its population is under the age of 25.

What is slowing down the process?

• Fewer than 4% of engineers have the technical, cognitive, and language skills necessary for technology start-ups and only 3% have new-age skills in areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and mobile development. New and better training programmes have to be created to match industry requirements.
• 83% of senior executives from Indian companies believe that “policy-makers were behind the curve in terms of the laws they passed relating to technology and innovation”. Better legislation has to be passed to stimulate innovation.

Starting initiatives like Digital India, Make in India and Startup India, India is constantly branding itself as an innovation hub instead of the world’s leading outsourcing destination. If India strives hard to train tech talent, improve government regulations to foster innovation, and attract foreign and domestic investment in technology, it will soon become the next Silicon Valley.