India’s Startup Scene: Great at Biryani Delivery, Missing in Global Innovation

India’s startup scene has all the glitz of a Netflix docuseries. Flashy unicorns, charismatic founders, and the addictive convenience of having biryani delivered in 20 minutes. But scratch beneath the surface, and it becomes clear: while India excels in service-sector disruption, it’s still largely playing safe when it comes to real, hardcore innovation. Delivery apps and digital wallets may make headlines, but where are the Indian equivalents of Huawei, DJI, or OpenAI?

Put bluntly: we’re building faster food apps while others are building faster computers.

India’s startup culture has mastered the art of convenience but hasn’t dared to touch the deep end of the innovation pool — areas like quantum computing, semiconductor manufacturing, advanced biotechnology, or next-gen AI. The reasons are many, and frankly, systemic.

Let’s start with the education system. It still largely focuses on rote learning and churning out degree-holders rather than problem-solvers. Our top engineering schools may produce brilliant coders, but few are encouraged to tinker, invent, or fail gloriously. By the time a student finishes engineering, their dreams of launching a satellite have been replaced by a safe job offer from a multinational IT firm.

Then there’s the venture capital (VC) scene, which behaves more like a bank than a risk-taking enabler. VCs in India love the phrase “proven business model,” which is code for “something that worked in the U.S. or China.” They’ll throw crores at another food delivery app but go cold if you mention microchips or deep learning. Why? Because deep tech takes time, serious capital, and uncertainty — three things Indian investors avoid like a bad monsoon.

And it shows in the numbers. In 2023, India produced 23 unicorns, but barely a handful ventured into frontier sectors like space tech, AI, or biotech. Exceptions like Agnikul Cosmos (launch vehicles for satellites), Pixxel (Earth imaging), or Sarvam AI (generative AI models for Indian languages) exist, but they’re anomalies in an ecosystem otherwise obsessed with grocery delivery times and D2C beauty brands.

Meanwhile, government R&D spending hovers at 0.64% of GDP (2021 data), embarrassingly low compared to China’s 2.4% and the U.S.’s 3.4%. China’s “Made in China 2025” wasn’t just a slogan, it was a national mission to dominate global tech. Billions have been poured into AI, quantum computing, electric vehicles, and chip fabrication plants. India’s counter? “Digital India”, some hackathons, and the occasional grand promise.

To be fair, there are recent policy pushes — the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) launched in 2021 aims to boost chip manufacturing, and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes target electronics, EVs, and solar modules. But bureaucracy, capital scarcity, and an anaemic risk appetite in the VC community have meant progress is slow, and India still lacks a homegrown chip fab facility.

This isn’t just an economic gap. It’s a strategic vulnerability. In a world increasingly shaped by technology, India risks being a consumer, not a creator — a service provider in someone else’s digital empire. Our geopolitical ambitions, from asserting ourselves in global forums to becoming a counterweight to China, can’t be fulfilled if we’re dependent on others for the tools of the future.

The global AI race alone is expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2030, and while Indian firms build enterprise tools or SaaS platforms using AI, very few are contributing to foundational models, cutting-edge AI research, or global AI policy frameworks. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Baidu’s ERNIE — these names shape the future of intelligence. Where’s India in this conversation?

And yes, having a strong delivery ecosystem is nice. But if the height of our innovation is getting groceries faster, while other nations are exploring Mars, building quantum supercomputers, and training AI systems capable of writing code, diagnosing disease, and composing symphonies, we’ve got a problem.

Another issue is the brain drain. India’s best and brightest STEM minds increasingly head to Silicon Valley, Singapore, or Berlin, lured by better research infrastructure, open intellectual environments, and — critically — investors who bet on ideas, not just profit spreadsheets. Without retaining and incentivizing this talent, our so-called “tech superpower” claim will remain hollow.

India needs to stop mistaking “jugaad” — creative quick-fixes — for serious innovation and start investing in long-term, high-stakes tech. That means overhauling STEM education to foster curiosity and risk-taking, encouraging moonshot projects, incentivizing deep tech startups, and getting VCs to grow a spine.

We’ve conquered the convenience economy. Now it’s time to aim for the kind of innovation that actually changes the world — not just your lunch plans.

---