India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market, with over 700 million users, yet not a single globally competitive Indian smartphone brand has emerged in the last decade. Walk into any electronics store in Delhi, Bengaluru, or Mumbai, and you’ll see shelves lined with devices from Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, and OnePlus. Their screens shine with global ambition. But they aren’t Indian. We are consumers of someone else’s innovation, users of someone else’s ecosystem, and more disturbingly, contributors to someone else’s economy.
It’s an uncomfortable truth, but truth nonetheless—India does not make smartphones, at least not the kind that drives global demand or commands innovation. Yes, we assemble them. Yes, we attract foreign direct investment to build manufacturing plants. But we are not the creators. Not the disruptors. Not the owners of intellectual property that sits at the core of these devices.
We are a market, not a maker.
And that, my fellow Indians, must change.
For the last few years, we’ve proudly declared “Make in India” as a national mission. It’s a slogan that appeals to our sense of self-reliance and patriotism. But slogans without substance are dangerous. Most of the smartphones “Made in India” are merely assembled here. The processor? Designed in California. The screen? Manufactured in South Korea. The operating system? Controlled by Google or Apple. The app ecosystem? American-dominated.
Where is India in this value chain? At the bottom rung, doing the physical labour, while the real wealth—the patents, the software, the brand equity—resides abroad.
And let’s not even talk about data. Our private lives, browsing habits, financial details, even biometric information, often end up in data centres located outside Indian jurisdiction. We have effectively outsourced our digital sovereignty.
India has always been a nation of thinkers, creators, and technologists. Our engineers power Silicon Valley. Our coders are in every tech firm worth its salt. Our startups are vibrant, inventive, and hungry. So why can’t we build the next iPhone or the next Android?
The answer lies not in capability, but in vision and willpower.
We don’t lack talent. What we lack is ecosystem support, policy courage, and strategic clarity. We need an industrial policy that supports not just low-end assembly but full-stack technology development—from silicon chip design to operating systems, from hardware prototyping to software ecosystems.
It’s time for the Indian government to look beyond short-term FDI numbers and start nurturing Indian IP ownership. Subsidies should flow not just to foreign giants setting up shops here, but to Indian entrepreneurs who dare to dream of building tech for the world.
Make no mistake—technology is not just business. It is geopolitics. It is control. The nation that builds the operating systems and owns the digital infrastructure, controls the narratives, the intelligence, the surveillance, and yes, even the commerce of the future.
The US dominates the software world. China dominates hardware and manufacturing. Where does India stand?
Caught in between. Perpetually choosing sides, never being one.
India must now treat technology the way we treat defence and energy—as a strategic sector. Because a nation that doesn’t control its own digital destiny will eventually be reduced to a vassal state in the virtual world order.
Imagine a world where your smartphone runs on an Indian-made operating system. Imagine a chipset designed in Bengaluru, not Taiwan. Imagine a phone brand that doesn’t just cater to India’s billion-plus users but competes head-to-head in African, Latin American, and European markets.
It’s not fantasy. It’s ambition.
But ambition without action is delusion. Indian startups must step up. Indian VCs must take bigger risks. Indian consumers must support Indian brands. And Indian policymakers must create a fertile, protected environment for homegrown giants to rise.
We need a Bharat OS. We need a Trishul Chipset. We need a smartphone brand that becomes to India what Huawei is to China or Samsung is to South Korea.
And we need it now—not ten years from now.
Let’s face an uncomfortable cultural truth: Indian consumers often equate foreign with superior. We line up for the latest iPhone even when an Indian brand offers a competitive product. We trust American apps more than Indian ones. We’ve internalised a colonial hangover that says “imported is better.”
That must change.
To build a self-reliant tech India, we must first build self-respecting Indian consumers.
Buy Indian. Support Indian. Build Indian.
India is not destined to be just a market. We were once the cradle of civilisation and science. We gave the world the number zero, pioneered metallurgy, and imagined rockets in epics when the West was still figuring out fire.
That India still lives within us. But it must wake up.The time to dominate the tech space is now. Not by begging for investments. Not by importing shiny toys. But by building our own empires—bit by byte, chip by chip, app by app.
We are 1.4 billion strong. We are not the world’s dumping ground. We are its future. Let’s start acting like it.
