A big question was going around in Indian social media recently and in every big Tech companies is worrying, Why can’t we do this?
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Not only social media and tech companies, but every Indian should think once, Why can’t we make a platform like Facebook, Google, Chat GPT, and now it is the turn of DeepSeek and Grok.
Just one question. Although many CEOs of these big companies are Indians, directly or indirectly. If our neighboring country China can make Deepseek, which created a stir in the whole world in a short time, then why can’t India?
Even because of the deepseek get-on race, the shares of American company Nvidia had to face a decline of about 600 billion dollars. So the question is, why can’t we make AI tool like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and now Gork?
3 main reasons why can’t build something like DeepSeek
Well, there are several reasons, not just one. It is a combination of many reasons, the main one of which is definitely money; it’s not about a bigger budget; I am talking about a better budget.
We do not allocate enough money for research and development; look at these numbers—how the rest of these countries spend on their GDP in R&D.
- US spends 3.4% of its GDP on R&D.
- China spends 2.4% of its GDP on RND.
- Israel spends 5.7% of its GDP on R&D.
- India spends 0.6%.
This amount of money is not enough to achieve success, and it is not just about the government.
India’s private sector also spends less on research and development. Private companies account for only 36% of our total expenditure.
Whereas in China and America it is more than 70%, so we need coordination between the government and the private sector to invest more money in research and development.
This is the first reason why we can’t make deepseek or ChatGPT.
Why Indian Startups Fail
The second reason is the market; Mr. Sridhar Vembu has explained it very well; he is the chief scientist in Zoho. Which is an Indian multinational company. He says that the Indian market is not safe, so any startups are unsafe in India.
Here is the example; just imagine if an Indian startup makes a search engine like Google. It is not 100% like Google, but it is an alternative to Google, and it is Swadeshi, which means made in India.
What do you think will happen to it? Do you think Indians will leave Google and start using this Swadeshi product? The answer is always “No.”.
American tech companies have made their products cheap and well established in every country; that is why they will push out Indian products or any other product that comes into the market.
In fact, the same thing happened with India’s social media platform “KOO,” but this never happens in China, and they don’t let it happen either.
China has their own homegrown method where they try-fail-try-try until they succeed, and once they succeed, they bring it to the world like Deep Seek.
So it’s not always about the quality of the product; it’s also about the environment, the market, and the promotion of that product, which is developed in their country, which never happens in India.
India’s Biggest Barrier to AI Development
Although they have so many platforms for it—they have the internet, they have semiconductors, they have smartphones, and they have laptops—India has not yet succeeded in any of these areas.
And once you lag behind in these areas, you will remain behind. This is generally how technology works, and now A.I., A.I is a cutting-edge technological advancement.
But what if we skip some of these steps? What if we directly focus on new technologies like A.I., Then we will need help from others.
For example, A.I. needs special semiconductors; all of them are made by an American company called Nvidia. And America will not sell it to you.
There is a condition for this: Washington has put a limit on the sale of advance chips, you cannot buy as many as you want.
Countries like India can buy only 50,000 chips till 2027; this is the upper limit imposed by the US government.
Do you know how many chips India is planning to buy right now? The plan is for 10,000 chips, which is not a bad quantity. But companies like OpenAI train their chat GPT on the same quantity of chips.
There is no reason why India can’t do the same, but the problem is that companies like OpenAI have unlimited access to the chip.
Whereas India would have to train and research on these same 10,000 chips, and by the time we create Chat GPT, they would be several steps ahead of us.
Three main reasons that hold India back
- Lack Of research
- Competition from US tech companies for growth
- Massive Gap with the Leaders
So now we have to think, How do we change this, and how did our neighboring country, China, do it?
They anticipated the shortage of chip supply, so China has already started stocking chips; they have started making their own chips; companies like Huawei use Chinese-made chips.
Obviously they are also very good, and finally they do one thing, which is a national campaign of that product. And the common man also adopts it.
The national campaign is the one that brings together all the stakeholders—government, startups, private investors, and common people. If this is not done, then we Indians will always be behind in this race.
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