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Comment by breitling | Hacker News Reader

Shift innovation to India?

Have they seen India's track record on tech innovation? The education system there does not produce very innovative people or engineers. However they are great at following exact instructions so I'm sure that part of engineering team will do well

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You are not wrong overall but the mindset is changing. It wil take many years though due to the systematic and cultural norms. Most Indians are taught to do "service" instead of "innovate" because it has been a poor country with tons of competition for good jobs. Only in the last decade or so, the younger generation is realizing that innovation is important and even though the Govt. is mostly inept in encouraging this, I have seen first hand how the kids think these days and it is a good start. With more people moving into the Middle class, their access to resources is improving as well. May takes decades though.

I am from Hyderabad and one of my friend works at Uber Engineering here. From what I understand, the quality of engineers matches to that of his US counterparts, if not better. He got his degree from IIT, a tier 1 college in India.

I agree that India has not been the best in terms of tech innovation but the situation is changing. The start up ecosystem is booming here and investments are following too.

Relative to what? India has 1.34 billion people. If other countries put a million self selected students to compete with each other in a dog fight, I am sure the resulting 50k might have good chance of being similar.

Startup ecosystem is booming on foreign investment especially from china. Local investment is still dire.

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> He got his degree from IIT, a tier 1 college in India.

Students from IIT in India are filtered from millions of students. They only take about 10-15k students every year and the rest are in NIT and other relevant institutions (around 50k). About 1 million self selected students participate in jee-mains every year. I only meant to highlight that OP's friend may be biased compared to the common situation here.

Here is the article for chinese investment in top Indian startups - https://www.vccircle.com/here-s-a-snapshot-of-key-chinese-in...

With government trying to shut down foreign investment, I don't see investment opportunities in India increasing.

They produce plenty of competent engineers, but my layman's interpretation is the problem of capital being concentrated in Silicon Valley, so there's little chance for tech entrepreneurs to flourish within India itself.

No doubt they produce many great engineers, my argument is that they are not necessarily innovative (having studied in the same system, I've seen it first hand)

Innovation is a result of many factors, keeps changing with time. The Japanese were the top innovators for many decades, not so much anymore.

Similar to Europe.

Yeah, that's correct. Most people are poor and afraid to venture into unknown territories. The consumer market isn't so receptive either for this reason. Coaching institutes and education centers are touted or seen as a path to wealth but they are just sad factories with tens or hundreds of students in one class.

I wonder how much of this is the engineers themselves (and their training), and how much is due to how the industry was built and continues to function in India. Traditionally, innovation and creativity wasn't a positive thing for the type of work that was outsourced there, and I'd imagine there's a good deal of momentum that has created a culture of valuing accuracy to spec and timeliness over creativity and innovation within companies.

I certainly don't see a lack of creativity or innovation from immigrants from South Asia working in North America.

That is incorrect. The tech innovation track is bad because most of talented indians join mostly Trading based family business.

Most of Agarwals,Jains,Brahmin are mostly businessman.(most indian big startup-enterprises are from this community.ex.Paytm,Reliance,Birla,Flipkart,OYO,OLA)

for example,I am jain(Baniya). I am having masters degree in IT(2013),had offer from US based MDM startup still I chose trading. Even now I spend 20 hours a week in IT work(hobby),from node projects,System drivers to my trading business specific IOT devices and even DIY Electronics project. But I dont find myself in IT business in near future.

My cousin who is also master degree holder in IT, He runs successful family owned supermarket with 15000+skus. His store is more advanced in tech then bigger competitors which I bet will earn him fruit in next 3-4 years.

Its personal choice not lack of innovation or talent.

Hard disagree. Most of the talented Indian engineers in top N tech companies in the US came from the Indian education system. They all migrated here in search of better opportunities.

Things are however changing in India due to the rapidly growing startup ecosystem which eventually lead to good careers and high salaries for software engineers back home. This is giving people less of a reason to move.

This comment is pretty ill informed on the tech scene in India. Most large companies already have engineering offices in India dealing with varying complexity of projects. You are probably only thinking of outsourcing companies.

Every country had to start somewhere. This could be their start.

I doubt if there's any region in the world that comes close to SV when it comes to innovation.

Indian engineers, at least the ones hired from the top institutes, can certainly innovate if they are provided the right environment.

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