Can India challenge the Internet's Big MAC?

While India was always way ahead in terms of IT Services, it might well be the startup explosion of 2021 that could propel it to the big league in terms of global tech products and giants

- Sunil Rajguru

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 giants, 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)