Vinod Khosla: Not a lot of (AI) big ideas from India
Truth hurts.
Well, the Indian ecosystem needs to wake up and realize that even after raising billions of billions of dollars, we:
Haven’t produced a single global consumer tech company (forget about consumer platform like FB/Google) from India. In fact, the only one that deserves a mention is..UPI (which is a govt product).
Are playing too safe and only building SAAS products (because sales can dwarf everything else). Ofcourse, SAAS is great, but most of made-in-India products are sales driven and not product-led (unlike their western counterparts). Go and buy a Martech product subscription from an India startup vs. their global counterpart - you will be surprised to see the lack of platform thinking in many such companies.
Are majorly building transactional companies (lending, delivery etc etc) for the local economy
Still aren’t producing a lot of hacky AI products (the ones that are sexy and serves as a seed for bigger things)
Why do you think this is the case?
Is it just about risk-averse VCs? What about the founders? Are founders pushing the envelope? Or the ones pushing are leaving the country?
Is Vinod right?