Beyond the Hype: The Structural Realities Behind India’s Missing Tech Giants 

Market expert Saurabh Mukherjea argues that India’s struggle to create original, foundational tech giants like Google or OpenAI is not due to a lack of talent or innovation, but rather a result of structural economic realities. He emphasizes that developing groundbreaking intellectual property (IP) requires astronomical capital investments—tens of billions of dollars—that Indian companies simply cannot afford at their current stage of development, as India’s economy is still only one-twentieth the size of America’s.

This financial constraint is exemplified by Infosys’s past decision to not invest in a then-emerging OpenAI, a choice driven by the risk-averse, services-oriented model that has defined India’s tech success. Instead of attempting to “reinvent the wheel,” Mukherjea advocates for a pragmatic strategy of “IP arbitrage,” where India leverages its strengths by building innovative applications on top of existing global technologies to solve local and global problems, thereby building great companies and economic muscle for the future while deferring the creation of foundational IP to a later, more capital-rich phase of its economic revolution.

Beyond the Hype: The Structural Realities Behind India’s Missing Tech Giants 

We’ve all heard the narrative. India, a nation of 1.4 billion people, a global IT services powerhouse, and a fertile ground for engineering talent, has yet to produce a true, homegrown, original tech giant. Where is India’s Google, its OpenAI, its Nvidia, or its Tesla? This question has become a persistent itch in the national consciousness, often answered with simplistic critiques about a lack of innovation or risk-aversion. 

However, according to seasoned market expert Saurabh Mukherjea, Founder of Marcellus Investment Managers, the answer isn’t a failure of imagination. It’s a matter of cold, hard economics and a nation’s position on its developmental timeline. His analysis moves the conversation beyond blame and toward a clearer, more pragmatic understanding of India’s current—and future—place in the global tech ecosystem. 

The Capital Conundrum: Why “Rs. 10, 20, 30 Billion” is the Real Barrier 

At the heart of Mukherjea’s argument is a stark financial reality that is often glossed over in popular discourse. Building foundational, world-leading intellectual property (IP) is astronomically expensive. 

“We’re one-twentieth the size of America. It takes Rs 10, 20, and Rs 30 billion to build foundational IP… Indian companies just don’t have that kind of money,” Mukherjea stated. 

To put this in perspective, OpenAI is reported to have spent over $2 billion (approximately ₹16,600 crores) on computing power and research to develop GPT-4 before it ever made a dollar in revenue. Google’s annual R&D budget runs into tens of billions of dollars annually. These are sums that dwarf the entire market capitalization of many mid-sized Indian IT firms. 

This isn’t just about having deep pockets; it’s about the ability to sustain massive, speculative, long-term burns with no guarantee of success. The venture capital ecosystem in the United States and China is built to fund these high-risk, high-reward “moonshots.” While India’s startup VC scene is vibrant, it is still largely focused on business model innovation (e.g., e-commerce, fintech, food delivery) applied to the massive domestic market, not on funding fundamental scientific or technological research that targets global markets. 

The Indian corporate sector, including giants like TCS, Infosys, and Reliance, are incredibly profitable. However, their business models are built on efficiency, scalability, and execution—not on betting the company on a single, unproven technological breakthrough. Their shareholders, often expecting steady dividends and predictable growth, would likely revolt against such a capital-intensive and risky strategy. 

The Infosys and OpenAI Saga: A Case Study in Cultural Dissonance 

The news snippet’s mention of Infosys’s near-miss with OpenAI is a perfect, painful illustration of this cultural and strategic divide. Around 2016-17, then-CEO Vishal Sikka, a former SAP executive with a forward-looking vision for AI, saw the potential in a then-obscure research lab called OpenAI. He advocated for a significant investment. 

This vision, however, clashed with the core ethos of the company’s founders, notably Narayana Murthy, whose “classic” Infosys model was built on principles of frugality, predictable profitability, and client-focused service delivery. Investing a huge sum in a speculative AI research project with an uncertain commercial future was anathema to this established, proven worldview. 

From a pure risk-management perspective of a services company, Murthy’s caution was understandable. From the perspective of creating a global technology pioneer, it was a historic missed opportunity. This incident isn’t about blaming individuals; it’s a symptom of a broader structural condition. In India’s current economic phase, the market does not yet reward—and may even punish—the extreme risk-taking required to build foundational tech. 

The “Gradual Demise” of Salaried Employment: A Connected Shift 

Mukherjea’s other provocative prediction—the “gradual demise of salaried employment as a worthwhile avenue”—is intrinsically linked to this theme. He argues this decade will be defined by entrepreneurship and equity ownership. 

This shift is a natural consequence of an economy maturing beyond its initial phases. The first wave of India’s economic revolution was built on the services outsourcing model, which created millions of salaried jobs for engineers. The next phase, Mukherjea suggests, will be driven by those who create and own IP, not just those who implement it. 

This doesn’t mean salaried jobs will disappear, but that the highest rewards for “educated, determined, hardworking people” will increasingly flow to founders, early employees with stock options, and investors, rather than to those climbing a traditional corporate ladder. This creates a new, necessary risk-taking mentality that, over time, could fuel the kind of ambition needed to build original tech giants. 

The Path Forward: IP Arbitrage Over IP Creation 

So, is India doomed to be a perpetual follower? Mukherjea’s outlook is far from pessimistic; it’s pragmatic. 

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Not yet… If we use established IP properly, we’ll still make a lot of money, and build great companies.” 

His proposed strategy is one of “IP Arbitrage.” Instead of spending $2 billion to create a foundational AI model, Indian companies can take existing, powerful models from OpenAI, Google, or Meta and build incredible, valuable applications on top of them tailored for the unique needs of the Indian and global markets. 

This is a proven and brilliant strategy. 

• The IT Services Boom: India’s first tech wave was built on arbitraging the cost of software talent to service Western companies that had already built the hardware and software platforms. 

• The Startup Ecosystem: Companies like Zomato and Flipkart didn’t invent e-commerce or GPS; they brilliantly applied existing technologies to solve complex local logistics and market challenges. 

• The Future in AI: The real fortune in the AI gold rush may not be for those selling picks and shovels (the foundational models), but for those who know where to dig (the applications). Indian firms can build AI solutions for agriculture, healthcare, vernacular language processing, and financial inclusion that are best understood from within the region. 

This application-layer innovation is less capital-intensive, faster to market, and leverages India’s profound strengths: a deep understanding of complex, large-scale markets and unparalleled software execution skills. 

Conclusion: Playing the Long Game 

Saurabh Mukherjea’s analysis reframes India’s “tech giant” dilemma not as a shortcoming but as a stage of growth. The United States didn’t become a tech innovator overnight; it was the result of decades of massive public and private investment, a world-leading university system, and a culture of venture capital that emerged from a position of immense economic strength. 

India is still on that journey. To expect it to compete head-to-head with the entrenched giants of the West on their own terms—spending tens of billions on pure research—is to ignore the structural realities of its economy. 

For now, the winning strategy is to master the art of the possible: dominate application development, build formidable companies through IP arbitrage, and continue to grow the economic muscle. The capital, the risk appetite, and the global ambitions for foundational innovation will follow. The wheel doesn’t always need to be reinvented; sometimes, it just needs to be steered in a new direction, and that is where India’s immediate—and immense—opportunity lies.