WILL AI CRASH LIKE THE DOT-COM BOOM?

N the late 1990s, India fell in love with internet.

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Neon-lit cybercafés were everywhere; companies were adding ‘.com’ to their names to double their valuations with little more than a URL and a pitch deck; investors believing they were sitting on a gold mine, dreaming of a future where clicks would replace commerce. Valuations soared; startups with no revenue, and often no product, were going public. Then came 2000: the music stopped and the mirage cleared. Trillions and inflated dreams evaporated.

The dotcom bust didn’t kill the internet — it killed the promise of an instant digital future. Instead, it cleared the runway for its sustainable adoption, and out of that rubble rose Google, Amazon, and the foundations of the modern digital economy. Reality reset, driven by those who deliberately built for the future. The lesson is: most revolutions in tech don’t arrive with a bang. They arrive disguised as slow, frustrating, incremental change.