BharatGen will win only if
We have our own middleware
To own our own customers.
My favourite line is “ai is what ai does”. As of now it is a toy that entertains. Nvidia is the sole manufacturer of that toy. And the world seems to wrongly believe that it is the only toy which will win. In classical style, everyone is chasing how they can add value to that toy. This has made the toy maker the worlds most valuable company. Actually, It is to ai what Barbie is to dolls. You make something for a dollar and market it for usd 10. And then hope the world need Barbie dolls to survive.
It doesn’t.
Hardware takes longer than software. It has many more uncertainties. It needs supply chains. It also needs customers. As of now Nvidia has all that. And the Americans would like us to believe that no one else can match up.
Not true.
India cannot be underestimated.
Let’s start with the architecture at a macro level. Nvidia would like to polarise the world into two – a consumer device (smartphone or laptop), a cloud resource (data centre). Conceptually this is not going to work for long. Data centres have negative economies of scale. Beyond a point, the larger the more inefficient.
In order to win, India needs a hybrid approach. First is a software first approach. Bharat Gen is doing that and India AI mission is doing a good job of becoming a meal ticket for NVIDIA.
The second approach is to start from the front end – and then vigorously integrate backward. This is non trivial. But not impossible. This is what IIT Alumni Council type players are doing.
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The Core Thesis
India’s Sovereign AI Opportunity
• AI middleware
• Domain platforms
• Deployment at population scale
• Sovereignty = interoperability + choice, not isolation
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Why India Is Structurally Different
India’s Advantages
• Digital Public Infrastructure:
• Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker, ONDC
• Massive, price-sensitive domestic market
• World-class software & systems-integration talent
• Regulatory momentum around data + consent
No other country has DPI + scale + openness together.
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Where Indian Capital Should Invest
High-IRR Layers
1. AI Middleware & Orchestration (Top Priority)
– Model-agnostic, cloud-agnostic
– Auditability, compliance, cost optimization
2. Vertical AI Platforms
– Manufacturing, energy, BFSI, GovTech, healthcare
– Workflow + data moats
3. AI hardware at three level
– edge servers housed in the telco offices so as to reach Fibres users directly. For connectivity.
– high performance computing located in offices, colleges etc for context and competency building.
– cloud based data centres for compute.
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Indian Endgame
What Success Looks Like (15.8.2027)
• AI services deployed across models and clouds
• Falling AI cost for MSMEs & government
• Middleware platforms become core infrastructure
Final takeaway
India’s AI win is about speed deployment of edge and corporate infrastructure. Large data centres shd be left to the Global North.
