It's 'techno-colonialism' now: Ola CEO

Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has coined the term “techno-colonialism” to describe a modern phenomenon where India’s data is exported to global data centres, processed, and then repurposed and sold back to India.

- 

Aggarwal likened this practice to the historical exploitation of Indian resources by the British East India Company, arguing that while India produces a significant portion of the world’s data, the benefits of this data are largely siphoned off by foreign tech giants. “Only one-tenth of that (data) is stored in India. Ninety per cent is exported to global data centers, largely owned by big techs. It is processed into AI, brought back into India, and sold to us in dollars. Yes, it is exactly what happened 200 years ago with the East India Company,” Aggarwal argued. “They used to export cotton and bring clothes from abroad. Now we’re exporting data and bringing intelligence from abroad.... Techno-colonialism. Techno-colonialism. I don’t know whether this is a word or not, but... It’s been done,” he further said.

There was a particular instance at ANI where one of its recent news stories was repurposed abroad and served back to its subscribers based out of India, without necessary attribution.