INTO THE DEEP

A nation's global stature is defined by its technological prowess, and India is realising the need to get its deep tech act together

- BY K. SUNIL THOMAS

In a recent Mann ki Baat broadcast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled off a linguistic feat that even P.V. Narasimha Rao, his predecessor who was fluent in 17 languages, could not achieve. Modi addressed his diverse audience in their native tongues—from chaste Telugu and Bengali to Odia and Punjabi.

But unlike Rao, who belonged to the pre-internet era, Modi had advanced tools at his disposal. He got Bengaluru startup Sarvam AI to recreate his voice, originally recorded in Hindi, in multiple Indian languages. Sarvam AI, selected by the Union government to build India's first homegrown large language model (LLM), is building a model capable of reasoning, fluent in Indian languages and ready for scaling to the population level. The Mann ki Baat demo was just a preview.

This generative AI 'trick', however, is just a starting block when it comes to India's deep tech ambitions. Deep tech refers to innovations from startups and companies driven by advanced science and engineering in fields like robotics, space, defence, clean energy, biotechnology and quantum computing. With India's technology startup boom now largely driven by consumer app-driven 'shallow tech,' uncomfortable questions are being raised about how future-ready the country is in the deep tech space.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal recently sparked debate by calling out India's startup ecosystem. "We are focused on food delivery apps," he said, "turning unemployed youth into cheap labour so that the rich can get their meals without moving out of their house!"

Goyal raised two valid points. One, Indian entrepreneurs are not focusing enough on deep tech and advanced foundational science solutions. Two, it is not just a matter of GDP growth or better lives. Today, in a world increasingly shaped by geo-strategy, a nation's technological edge directly influences its global standing.