India must focus on product development to lead tech world

Elon Musk, chief executive officer, Tesla, has been named as the 'Person of the Year' for 2021 by the Time magazine. Making the announcement, Time magazine in its citation said, "for creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year." Though Musk is a personality who evokes strong reactions on both extremes, he is undoubtedly a leader who is driving the technology transformation across the globe. Through companies like Tesla, SpaceX, leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company, Musk is exploring new possibilities in many technology frontiers. Naming Musk as the person of the year comes at a time when the Covid pandemic has changed our fundamental beliefs in many ways. It has also shown many seemingly difficult scenarios can be executed seamlessly by leveraging technology. For instance, technology-powered solutions have enabled India to achieve many milestones this year. Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the country's flagship payments platform, touched record highs - both in terms of value and volume of transactions in October 2021. Overall transactions crossed the $100-billion mark in value term and 4.2 billion transactions in volume term. With more than 20 crore registered users, Covid tracing app 'Aarogya Setu' and vaccination support platform 'CoWIN' are those success stories that are only possible through leveraging technology. So, Musk winning the crown, in a way, makes technology the winner in many senses for 2021.

During this year, Indian technology industry has also shown amazing resilience. Over the years, India has been best known as the technology back office of the world. Of late, this tag is changing. Increasingly, many cutting-edge technology innovations serving the world have been coming out of the country. During the pandemic, the $180 billion worth Indian IT industry has not only migrated to a complete remote model of working in no time, but it has also ensured zero disruption in workflows. Such resilience has improved the stature of Indian IT industry in the globe and many reluctant enterprises are now more willing to outsource work to India.

Against this backdrop, the country should focus more on product development front that solves varied critical problems faced by the mankind. Interestingly, the journey has already begun. Many SaaS (Software-as-a-service) companies are gaining market share with clients distributed through the world. The successful listing of Freshworks in Nasdaq indicates that Indian technology startups are coming up age. This year also saw record number of public listing by internet startups on Indian bourses. So, the journey of thousand miles has already started to take shape in India. The country can no longer take solace in the fact that India-born CEOs are heading global technology giants. It must create and retain those exceptional leaders in the country for setting up the Googles and Apples of the world. India is a home to more than 130 crore of global population. Any technology solution that solves the problem of this populace can be replicated across the globe. As we are in the verge of approaching the next year, India should take the lead in the technology world. In that way, we can serve the humanity through technology-powered solutions and show the world that technology is a force for greater good.