“Are we going to be happy being delivery boys and girls?” Commerce minister Piyush Goyal taunted the Indian startup industry at the 2025 edition of Startup Mahakumbh in New Delhi last week. At the annual jamboree organised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade for industry upstarts, Goyal said, What are Indian startups of today - we are focused on food delivery apps, turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so the rich can get their meals without moving out of their house.”
Like typical Indian middle-class parents comparing the marksheet of the neighbour's child with that of their own, Goyal did the inevitable side-by-side comparison with Chinese startups. Highlighting the stark contrast between the two countries, he argued that while Chinese companies developed electric mobility and mobility tech, Indian startups were focused on food delivery and gig work. That won't do, he said. “You are the sculptors of new India. You have to make Viksit Bharat 2047 happen.”
Goyal's lament predictably got a backlash from the startup industry, with some pointing out that the minister got his numbers wrong, and others asking him to also compare the regulatory and policy framework of the two countries for good measure. While Goyal is not entirely wrong about the slow pace of innovation in the Indian industry, where is he really coming from? Why the deeptech ‘FOMO'? It is true that the dramatic arrival of commercially viable artificial intelligence has suddenly revealed the disturbing possibility of a world divided into AI haves and have-nots.
There is, however, a deeper worry, unstated in the speech, at work. It is the foreboding of an impending war and the feeling of unpreparedness. The surge of nationalism in many countries, coupled with the retreat of democracy across the world, accentuates it. Goyal is not alone. The fear is global, and nationalist leaders want private entrepreneurs to feel and share it. But each has a different approach. While China wants the private sector to be under the party's thumb, Europe wants to handle the private sector with kid gloves. The US industry, meanwhile, is seeking the unleash-the-crazy-billionaire approach.
The February Meeting In China
After cracking down on the private sector for the past four years, the Chinese leadership sat down with business leaders and entrepreneurs in February. President Xi Jinping told them, “The basic policies and guidelines of the (Chinese Communist) Party and the state for the development of the private economy have been incorporated into the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and will be adhered to and implemented consistently. They cannot and will not change.”
Xi urged the private sector to completely align with the objectives of the Communist Party of China for high-quality growth and national goals. “It is time for private enterprises and private entrepreneurs to show their talents.” Manoj Kewalramani, who heads China research at Takshashila Institution, points out that the choice of speakers indicated emphasis on hard tech and industrial technology over consumer tech.
Draghi Report In Europe
Presenting the Future of European Competitiveness report to the European Parliament in September last year, Mario Draghi said, “The core problem in Europe is that new companies with new technologies are not rising in our economy. In fact, there is no EU company with a market capitalisation over €100 billion that has been set up from scratch in the last fifty years.” Draghi said innovating and growing big tech companies was essential for the survival of the European project. “The European Union exists to ensure that Europe's fundamental values are always upheld: democracy, freedom, peace, equity and prosperity in a sustainable environment.”
Europe imports 80% of its digital technology, and only four out of the world's 50 top tech companies are European. Draghi's answer to that was preparing a conducive environment and investing in the right places. He wanted Europe to overhaul its approach to skills, using data to identify skills gaps and investing in education at every stage. “For Europe to succeed, investment in technology and in people cannot substitute for each other. They must go hand in hand.”
Suggesting urgent regulatory overhaul to create a truly European single market, the Draghi report seeks a “profound review” of funding innovation through public money. Breakthrough technologies are often “too risky or require too much financing” for the private sector to bear, it says, and bats for private investment to be reoriented towards hi-tech sectors.
The Techbros In The US
While Chinese tech's long march continues along Xi Jinping's doctrine of perfecting “socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era”, and Draghi urges innovation in a desperate attempt to preserve the European value system, US President Donald Trump and his deputy, JD Vance, play mascots for a certain kind of tech nationalism driven by billionaire Silicon Valley tech bros.
A bewildering ideological treatise titled The Technological Republic was recently published by the maverick CEO of currently America's most valuable defence tech firm, Palantir Technologies. In the book, the author, Alex Karp, who co-founded Palantir with billionaire Peter Thiel, echoes Goyal's sentiments about consumer app companies and bemoans the decline of American technological ambition. “The market rewarded shallow engagement with the potential of technology, as startup after startup catered to the whims of late capitalist culture without any interest in constructing the technical infrastructure that would address our most significant challenges as a nation,” Karp laments. “The age of social media platforms and food delivery apps had arrived. Medical breakthroughs, education reform, and military advances would have to wait.”
Karp and Thiel are among the influential tech billionaires and financiers backing Trump and Vance. The veep, once a sworn Trump baiter, virtually owes his political career to Thiel, who heavily funded his campaigns. Thiel uses his wealth with the intent to transform American politics.
Karp's thesis could be read with his colleague and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar's industrial manifesto, The Defense Reformation, which calls for drastically changing the way the government approaches the defence industry. “We have prayed at the altar of process for too long,” Sankar writes. “We have no time to waste in resurrecting the American Industrial Base we depended on in the depths of the Cold War.”
Karp argues that Silicon Valley giants that dominate the American economy have made the strategic mistake of casting themselves as existing essentially outside the country in which they were built. They saw America as a dying empire. “The vital yet messy questions of what constitutes a good life, which collective endeavours society should pursue, and what a shared and national identity can make possible, have been set aside as the anachronisms of another age,” he prefaces before advocating a sort of tech nationalism to restore America's glory through innovation and invention.
Can India Catch Up?
The Indian minister, too, wants entrepreneurs to join the wave of nationalism sweeping through the world. In fact, it was no surprise that Goyal reserved high praise for the country's defence industry, which was growing by leaps and bounds. Yet, entrepreneurs retort that India hardly offers ideal conditions for innovation. Far from it. They say whatever Indian startups have achieved is not because of the government but despite it.
Data proves their point - and, perversely, Goyal's too. In 2024, 97% of Indian households owned a mobile phone, but only 7% owned a computer or laptop. That drops to 2% in rural areas. Only two in 10 Indians know how to use a computer, but eight out of 10 can easily handle a mobile phone. ICT skills of youngsters are comparable to Russia, Brazil and Bangladesh but are way below developed economies such as Canada and the US, number crunchers at Data for India showed after analysing government-gathered data.
Goyal, as he mentioned in his speech, may be able to inspire young Indians, but he cannot skill them to challenge the world.
(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of 'The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation'.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
