2020s: The rise of the Indian Digital Native giants

The 1980s saw the rise of Indian IT. Nobody covered their rise better than Dataquest. The 2000s saw the rise of the Indian IT Services giants. Again, our annual Top 20 editions analysed their performance, growth and future prospects threadbare. One of the biggest stories in the pandemic era has been the continued growth of these very IT Services. Some time back, TCS surpassed Accenture to become the world’s most valuable IT services firm. It continued to make strides crossing $200 billion in market capitalization.

While the startup culture came late to India, it really took off in the 2010s. But it has come on its own in the pandemic era. Lockdowns and no touch imperatives gave a huge fillip to tech and India’s digital natives delivered the goods. That showed both in funding and the rise of unicorns. India’s first came in 2011 and 2020 ended with its 37th. Now the number of unicorns in the year 2021 crossed 37 by November itself! When has a year been worth more than a decade? While the Nykaa IPO debut was spectacular, even though Paytm underperformed, it easily broke the $10 billion mark, an unthinkable regularity just a few years back.

The 2010s was the Decade of China and now the 2020s could well be that of India. China is cracking down on Big Tech. Its startup funding hasn’t been that great this year. Supply Chain China is no longer the brand it once used to be. They are seeing a falling domestic demand. China is in severe population decline and by the end of this decade, India will have the largest working population in the world, not the former.

The government is making all the right noises and coming out with one incentive after the other to promote all kinds of technologies including those related to electronics, semiconductors and drones. Our biggest failures have been with creating world beating tech products along with R&D. But it’s just a matter of time before we get there with these two with all the other changes taking place in Indian IT.

India as a country has handled the pandemic quite well and upgraded its technology in an unprecedented way. If the mantra of the world has been techceleration (technology + acceleration), the India story has been no different.

While the old giants are doing well, it is time for the new ones to rise.