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While the article doesn't explicitly make the association, I get the impression that a lot of HN readers make the assumption that India's tech sector is synonym

While the article doesn't explicitly make the association, I get the impression that a lot of HN readers make the assumption that India's tech sector is synonymous with its IT services industry. Not so. While it is true that IT services is plateauing, that is not so with the tech sector as a whole. E-commerce, cloud-computing, fintech are exploding in India driven by a massive domestic market demand and an ability to reach global markets easily. There is a new breed of product startups out of Bangalore and other places that are born global (e.g. Zoho). They build products (not services) for the world, and not just India. Inward investment into the Indian tech sector was the highest it ever was (though still dwarfed by investment into the US tech sector and China's tech sector) https://www.business-standard.com/article/specials/2017-saw-26-bn-of-pe-vc-investments-in-india-the-highest-in-a-decade-118020800090_1.html https://www.business-standard.com/article/specials/2017-saw-... So the doom and gloom are not quite accurate. Yes IT services may have plateaued after two decades of torrid growth, but tech is doing fine thank you.

kumarvvr 8y ago
Tech is doing fine, but India definitely dosen't have the homegrown talent to cater to the new wave of startups. The fault is the Indian education system, which silences creativity, encourages rote learning and focuses too much on numbers on report cards. Its really sad and alarming here. (I am from India). There are whole generations of students, who, from their early schooling, right up to a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, are taught to memorize and spit out answers. There are very few schools that actually teach creativity, problem solving skills, etc. A few years back, when complaints were made against rote learning, schools have begun to give 'home projects' to kids, ostensibly to improve their creative skills. However, these projects devolved into internet searches, copy-pasting online articles and pictures and calling it a day. Unless there is a revolution in the education system in India, it would be very difficult to have a large pool of talented problem solvers and creative thinkers. Those Indians who are famous or are talented, are that way because they fought against the system or ignored it completely or have had good mentors.
- sho 8y ago
  > silences creativity, encourages rote learning and focuses too much on numbers on report cards You can absolutely say that about the Chinese education system as well, and they seem to be doing OK. I agree it's a shame that creativity is undervalued, if not outright suppressed, by the education system, but at the same time I don't think entrepreneurial spirit arises from formal education in the first place.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Entrepreneurial spirit generally doesn't emerge from standard formal education, but not much is done to suppress it, and there are often extracurriculars to encourage young entrepreneurs. Rote memorization also only gets you so far, often you get tested on how you arrived at an answer, not just on the answer itself. Understanding the process is just as important as knowing it. Perhaps this is a bit like the schooling of Bolshevik Engineers versus American Engineers, the former had a much reduced curriculum that helped the USSR catch up in engineering talent on paper, meanwhile those engineers were missing key concepts that you need to understand to build planes, bridges and similar that won't spontaneously degrade.
    - mantas 8y ago
      Fun part is, high school is/was the other way. USSR curriculum was full of stuff that 99% of students wouldn't ever use. There was little incentive to use anything in practice. You had to memorise, pass test and then you can forget it. This practice continues to this day in big parts of ex-Soviet sphere. I had plenty of teachers who took pride in saying that "stupid Americans learn this only in university!". Yet Americans I meet remember what they learned and know who to put it to use. Meanwhile I don't remember jack shit :D
      - kamaal 8y ago
        You highlighted a very important. Getting degrees for sake of getting degrees. This is a big thing in India too. People become engineers and then decide what they want to do.
jeswin 8y ago
The problem is that we manufacture very little, and a disproportionate part of our GDP is services. If you take away services, there's not a lot of money coming into our economy. The size of our economy is tiny in comparison (smaller than UK's) and per-capita income is one of the lowest - there's not a lot of headroom to grow for companies targeting the domestic market. The point I'm making is, until manufacturing and industry take off, we won't offset exported IT Services with domestically focused tech of the "software" kind.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Does India actually want to grow manufacturing and industry though? Its notably more environmentally destructive, here in Seattle we're still cleaning up cadmium and other hazardous pollutants in the soil from Boeing's manufacturing partners from decades ago. Overall, considering the amount of remediation we've had to do, there are some industries that cost us more than they ever earned.
  - oblio 8y ago
    Boeing was the backbone of international and local airlines for decades. It seems to have been worth it.
- sumanthvepa 8y ago
  Yes. India is a poor country. Indeed a very poor one. But that does not necessarily constrain the growth of its tech sector. First, tech growth is not primarily about domestic per capita income or demand for software in the country. It is about exporting products while also catering to a rising domestic demand. i.e. use domestic demand to find product market fit and then expand globally. So global demand is more relevant than domestic per-capita income. More importantly manufacturing itself is changing in ways that are lowering capital costs and the barriers to entry into manufacturing. The trend in IoT is an example of that. A lot of new products will primarily be driven by a combination of hardware and software capabilities. Skills that are reasonably widely available in India. (Although China has vastly more talent there.) That positions India in a reasonably good place. So I'm optimistic that domestic tech manufacturing will grow well, but not in the traditional way, such as building semiconductor fabs. It will mostly come from many small companies that make niche-products serving and possibly dominating a narrow global market, with high margins. That's were the employment will come from. An example of this is a company that makes automation kits to convert traditional backhoes into remotely operated machines. The technology requires a combination of software, electronics and mechanical components. And Indian companies (or for that matter companies anywhere) that integrate well into global supply chains for these will do well.
manoj_venkat92 8y ago
Yep. I'm 4 years exp software engineer in the Bangalore/Indian startup ecosystem. I don't doubt that the services sector is declining but there's a decent talent pool. At the same time, a good number of American Product companies/High-Valued startups have opened up their Indian counterparts to produce software that's super costly to build in the US. But, I do hope that we shift our focus inward rather than towards US or somewhere. There must be enough demand as it is in India.
cpmouter 8y ago
I've tried Zoho and it's the most unreliable, "ghetto" thing I've ever tried (for lack of better words). UX/UI-wise, it looks like it was slapped together by a bunch of amateur programmers.

kumarvvr 8y ago

Tech is doing fine, but India definitely dosen't have the homegrown talent to cater to the new wave of startups. The fault is the Indian education system, which silences creativity, encourages rote learning and focuses too much on numbers on report cards. Its really sad and alarming here. (I am from India). There are whole generations of students, who, from their early schooling, right up to a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, are taught to memorize and spit out answers. There are very few schools that actually teach creativity, problem solving skills, etc. A few years back, when complaints were made against rote learning, schools have begun to give 'home projects' to kids, ostensibly to improve their creative skills. However, these projects devolved into internet searches, copy-pasting online articles and pictures and calling it a day. Unless there is a revolution in the education system in India, it would be very difficult to have a large pool of talented problem solvers and creative thinkers. Those Indians who are famous or are talented, are that way because they fought against the system or ignored it completely or have had good mentors.

sho 8y ago
> silences creativity, encourages rote learning and focuses too much on numbers on report cards You can absolutely say that about the Chinese education system as well, and they seem to be doing OK. I agree it's a shame that creativity is undervalued, if not outright suppressed, by the education system, but at the same time I don't think entrepreneurial spirit arises from formal education in the first place.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Entrepreneurial spirit generally doesn't emerge from standard formal education, but not much is done to suppress it, and there are often extracurriculars to encourage young entrepreneurs. Rote memorization also only gets you so far, often you get tested on how you arrived at an answer, not just on the answer itself. Understanding the process is just as important as knowing it. Perhaps this is a bit like the schooling of Bolshevik Engineers versus American Engineers, the former had a much reduced curriculum that helped the USSR catch up in engineering talent on paper, meanwhile those engineers were missing key concepts that you need to understand to build planes, bridges and similar that won't spontaneously degrade.
  - mantas 8y ago
    Fun part is, high school is/was the other way. USSR curriculum was full of stuff that 99% of students wouldn't ever use. There was little incentive to use anything in practice. You had to memorise, pass test and then you can forget it. This practice continues to this day in big parts of ex-Soviet sphere. I had plenty of teachers who took pride in saying that "stupid Americans learn this only in university!". Yet Americans I meet remember what they learned and know who to put it to use. Meanwhile I don't remember jack shit :D
    - kamaal 8y ago
      You highlighted a very important. Getting degrees for sake of getting degrees. This is a big thing in India too. People become engineers and then decide what they want to do.

jeswin 8y ago

The problem is that we manufacture very little, and a disproportionate part of our GDP is services. If you take away services, there's not a lot of money coming into our economy. The size of our economy is tiny in comparison (smaller than UK's) and per-capita income is one of the lowest - there's not a lot of headroom to grow for companies targeting the domestic market. The point I'm making is, until manufacturing and industry take off, we won't offset exported IT Services with domestically focused tech of the "software" kind.

StudentStuff 8y ago
Does India actually want to grow manufacturing and industry though? Its notably more environmentally destructive, here in Seattle we're still cleaning up cadmium and other hazardous pollutants in the soil from Boeing's manufacturing partners from decades ago. Overall, considering the amount of remediation we've had to do, there are some industries that cost us more than they ever earned.
- oblio 8y ago
  Boeing was the backbone of international and local airlines for decades. It seems to have been worth it.
sumanthvepa 8y ago
Yes. India is a poor country. Indeed a very poor one. But that does not necessarily constrain the growth of its tech sector. First, tech growth is not primarily about domestic per capita income or demand for software in the country. It is about exporting products while also catering to a rising domestic demand. i.e. use domestic demand to find product market fit and then expand globally. So global demand is more relevant than domestic per-capita income. More importantly manufacturing itself is changing in ways that are lowering capital costs and the barriers to entry into manufacturing. The trend in IoT is an example of that. A lot of new products will primarily be driven by a combination of hardware and software capabilities. Skills that are reasonably widely available in India. (Although China has vastly more talent there.) That positions India in a reasonably good place. So I'm optimistic that domestic tech manufacturing will grow well, but not in the traditional way, such as building semiconductor fabs. It will mostly come from many small companies that make niche-products serving and possibly dominating a narrow global market, with high margins. That's were the employment will come from. An example of this is a company that makes automation kits to convert traditional backhoes into remotely operated machines. The technology requires a combination of software, electronics and mechanical components. And Indian companies (or for that matter companies anywhere) that integrate well into global supply chains for these will do well.

manoj_venkat92 8y ago

Yep. I'm 4 years exp software engineer in the Bangalore/Indian startup ecosystem. I don't doubt that the services sector is declining but there's a decent talent pool. At the same time, a good number of American Product companies/High-Valued startups have opened up their Indian counterparts to produce software that's super costly to build in the US. But, I do hope that we shift our focus inward rather than towards US or somewhere. There must be enough demand as it is in India.

cpmouter 8y ago

I've tried Zoho and it's the most unreliable, "ghetto" thing I've ever tried (for lack of better words). UX/UI-wise, it looks like it was slapped together by a bunch of amateur programmers.