Can India challenge the Internet’s Big MAC?

If you look at the Top 20 social media platforms of the world (note this is a dynamic list), then Meta absolutely dominates at the top: 1. Facebook. 3. WhatsApp. 4. Messenger. 5. Instagram. Together they have about 7.5 billion users as against the global population of 7.9 billion. Of course there’s an overlap with many using all four services. Meta seems unstoppable especially since it is heading for the first mover advantage when the metaverse takes off.  

There is only one other entity that is there: Alphabet, with YouTube at No. 2. Alphabet is a giant in more ways. Gmail is a clear leader in its field with 1.7 billion users. Google Drive is becoming indispensable for those who want to work on the cloud. This is not even counting their biggest winner: Google Search. If you look at the global Alexa rankings: Their Search is at No. 1 and YouTube at No. 2.

The third entity is China. In the Alexa rankings, there are 12/20 Chinese companies. Basically the Internet is dominated by America and China in general and just three entities in particular: Meta, Alphabet and the Chinese Closed Internet. Call it the Big MAC (Meta Alphabet China).

When you look at the tech industry as a whole, America still dominates. In terms of market capitalization, 6/7 top companies are American companies called the A3M3: Apple Amazon Alphabet Microsoft Meta Musk (he has Tesla among others). (The other company in the 7 is Saudi Aramco)

The failure of the rest of the world

The biggest failure is that of Europe. It was one continent that always took the lead, especially after the Renaissance, with the Industrial Revolution being the prime example. Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, was English. So was Alan Turing, a pioneer in AI and known for the Turing Test.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN is not only known for the Large Hadron Collider but pioneering the Internet. Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web is English. The UK lays claim to many of the foundation stones of the Internet and modern day cryptography.

But you won’t find many British or European giants in the field of technology. While telecom companies are doing well in terms of revenue, Nokia is probably one of the biggest failures when it comes to what once could have been total global domination. SAP is 395th in the Fortune Global 500 list. In social networks, there’s no-one in the Top 20.

Another biggie which didn’t make it is Japan. There was a time when Japan took the lead in automobiles and electronics. In the world of technology we do have Sony, Hitachi and Fujitsu, but none of them are challenging A3M3. This despite the fact that Japan is still the third largest economy in the world.

If there are two countries which look like challengers of tomorrow, then one of them is South Korea with Samsung and LG. The second is Taiwan, the semiconductor giant. But though Taiwan is a virtually an independent country, it is “officially” part of China.

The opportunity that is India

So if the West is in decline and most other countries can’t stand up, then can India shatter the Big MAC index and make its own giants? A big complaint against India is that while we are strong on IT services, overall manpower and Indian origin tech CEOs, we are quite weak on tech products and R&D. Can we finally change that?

For one, the government is finally serious. We are trying our best to change our policy and successive union budgets are showing this trend. We are launching a series of Performance Linked Schemes, trying to woo the tech giants of the world and coming out with things like the comprehensive drone policy. There are innovations like the Account Aggregator network.

Maybe the brightest ray of hope comes from the startup industry. In the pre-pandemic age the Indian one was a distant third behind America and China. Now things are quickly changing. While the Chinese one seems to be in decline, the Indian startup industry is on a huge upswing. Funding is pouring from all over the world as the ideas are mushrooming.

India’s first unicorn came in 2011 and the end of 2020 saw the 37th. Well the tally for 2021 crossed 37 in November itself! This has been an unheard of growth. They are coming in diverse fields like ecommerce, gaming, SaaS, Social Media, FinTech & Crypto, HealthTech, EdTech, FoodTech, PropTech etc. The startups of today produce the tech products of tomorrow and become the giants of tomorrow. There is finally hope that there may be an Indian counter to Big MAC.