Nithin Kamath has joined the list of business leaders who have been heaping praise on China after their string of stunning achievements in the fields of technology, especially AI. The Zerodha co-founder and CEO also drew parallels with China and highlighted that India needs to develop a conducive environment for its researchers and help create an ecosystem that facilitates innovation.
"In the 1960s-1970s, India and China had roughly the same per capita GDP. They started their reforms in the 1980s, and by 1990, they had overtaken our per capita GDP. Say what you will about the differences in our worldviews and economic models, but their scientific and technological progress is undeniable across disciplines—DeepSeek is just the latest example," Kamath wrote on X.
Comparing the progress of the two countries, he shared a chart by The Economist that rated countries on the number of high-quality scientific papers they wrote. While China's graph showed a steep and dramatic rise, the European Union remained somewhat steady while the US showed a marked drop. India did not even feature in it.
"It gives you a quick and dirty idea of the progress China has made despite the fact that papers and citations can be gamed. India wouldn’t even show up on the chart," Kamath said, adding that one of the factors that hold India back is "short-termism".
"Problems are typically addressed through a patchwork or the jugaad mentality. This is true when it comes to business, politics, regulatory approaches, etc. Many problems that require focused long-term thinking instead get band-aid fixes," he said. "For example, you can’t just buy GPUs and expect Indians to create groundbreaking AI applications. Without the right talent and an enabling ecosystem that facilitates innovation, all the GPUs in the world will be pointless."
The Zerodha boss stressed an urgent need for India to seriously start building its own research capabilities. "While India does produce great researchers, we don’t seem to offer a conducive environment for them, which is why the majority of them go to the US," he said, hoping that if researchers are provided with a helpful ecosystem, we would, hopefully, see results in a decade.
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