Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently emphasised on using Indian-made products. Seen as a push to ‘Swadeshi’ products and services, the Prime Minister has urged every Indian citizen to promote domestic products in our bid to reduce dependence on foreign ones.

While such call can be seen as part of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ push of the Government of India, present timing points towards a bigger scheme of things. And these are related to shifting geopolitical environment. As the US under Trump administration turns towards trade protectionism, established alliances are witnessing a shift. Old assumptions are being revisited. Global analysts have started talking about a new world order.

It is a known fact that India-US relations are not in best of health at this point of time. From punitive tariff of 50 per cent imposed on India by the US to increasing H1B visa fee, recent US actions can be seen as outrightly hostile to India. With new dynamics emerging in Indo-US relations, vulnerability of India as an economy has come to the fore. For instance, dependence of India as country on American technology giants is huge.

Google, Microsoft, Meta to Apple, Indian users are completely dependent on American tech companies for doing their daily work. Enterprises’ dependence on hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft Azure & Google Cloud is very high. In a way, from enterprises to consumers, Indian system is wholly dependent on American technology firms. Such dependency exposes Indian economy to American whims in the future.

Ironically, this phenomenon has been playing out for years though India is considered to be power house in IT services space. The country houses the largest tech talent of the world with many cutting-edge innovations emerging from Indian centres of foreign companies.

Against this backdrop, the Indian PM’s call to be self-reliant in critical areas is timely. Recently, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw gave a media presentation, employing Zoho, a domestic rival to Microsoft’s PowerPoint. He also did without using Google Maps. Similarly, Zoho has launched its messaging app, Arattai, which has been India’s top apps to be downloaded from Playstore.

Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan have advocated in favour of the new messaging app. Such steps can be seen as initial steps by the Indian tech firms to come up with credible alternatives to tech giants’ multiple products. Despite India being a major user base of mobile phones, the country doesn’t have its own operating system.

Similarly, OpenAI to Perplexity; most generative AI apps count India as a major user base. But India is yet to develop its own LLM. Contrast to India, China has gone way ahead of India in terms of technological innovations. The country has developed its own operating system, browser to sophisticated semiconductor ecosystem. This provides China a huge advantage over other countries in terms of new technological innovations. India has to learn from other countries like China and develop its own key technology platforms to be truly self-reliant. Though India doesn’t subscribe to the idea of being an adversary to the US-led world order; it, however, doesn’t want to be in a position to be dictated by Western powers.

That will only happen if India attains sovereignty in technology space. In every manner, India has the capability to emerge as a leader in technology world. The country has huge technology talent, aspiring entrepreneurs, technology-savvy consumers and enabling regulations for creating its own digital stack. The success story of UPI shows that India not only has the capability to create a world-class digital product but also can scale it up at a fast pace.