Recently travelled to India after 6 (yes six) years. The last time I went, I was still a sophomore at UCLA. Since then, I've personally grown an unbelievable amount. In many ways, coming back, I felt like a completely different person than I did the last time I came here.
At a macro, India has, in many ways, remained unchanged and in many others, shifted completely. The first thought I had leaving the airport actually was "yes, this is still definitely a developing economy." That's not necessarily a bad thing. Marred by recent geopolitical waves, I actually think India has done a fine job maintaining its strong growth trajectory. GDP continues to grow healthily alongside population. It must be said, however, that the rising inequality is more obvious now than I've seen before. And as demand remains strong for essentials and semi-essentials, I was surprised to see the price difference compare to what I remember.
On the micro, despite the inequality, was happy to see that there seems to be a shift towards a digital-first mindset. Finally I saw a smartphone in the hands of the vast majority of folks I came across (spanning across income segments). Fintech has also started proliferating. I want govt's UPI initiative has been really impressively adopted across merchants and consumer alike, though understandably platforms like PayTM likely benefit the most in terms of actual bottomline. Having said that, the physical fintech ecosystem has some ways to go. Pine Labs POS machines straight up stopped working in more stores than I'd like to mention. Likely a testament of a "set and forget" mentality. Weird to see publicly developed virtual service working more reliably than privatised physical one; might be one of the first few times I've seen that across markets.
The services industry, despite the enormous workforce that can be put to use, remains excruciatingly inefficient. Bureaucracy seems to be present at nearly all levels. And it takes ages to get anything done. I do thing combined with my next point, India can grow even faster if the labour force is empowered with the right tools and regulations.
On emerging tech: the elephant in the room for me. India remains way behind peers like China forget about the States and UAE in terms of development and integration of tech such as AI. The case of building native AI use cases seems like a farfetched dream given India is yet to build its first proprietary LLM. Re: deeper tech such as quantum computing, pretty much non-existent at this stage. While China and US are building the next AI breakthroughs, Indian founders are developing food and grocery delivery. Not necessarily a criticism of founders per se. But a reflection has been that the broader systemic outlook of India remains nascent vs. comps.
Personally: Trip was definitely eye-opening. I feel like a completely different person than the last time I went back, and putting this "new" self back in "old" settings was… interesting.
India remains a sleeping giant. Though it does feel that its out of its REM sleep phase and much more into the lighter phases of sleep.