Abhivardhan
78.1K posts
@IndusThink
AI Governance @IndicPacific. President @IndianSocietyAI. Posts personal, unrelated to organisations I am affiliated with. My #AI book: https://t.co/IdknPNfVVL
Well, thanks @NDTVProfit. :)
India pays a premium for the privilege of not learning anything :) Every Indian car Tata, Mahindra, Maruti, all of them has a tiny computer inside called an ECU (Engine Control Unit) This computer decides everything - how much fuel to inject, when to shift gears, how brakes work, how the battery behaves in an EV. Think of it as the car's brain. India makes zero of these brains for passenger cars. All of them come from foreign companies, mainly Bosch (Germany). If you don't control the brain, you don't really control the car. Indian OEMs can't even add a simple valve to their own engine without asking Bosch for permission. They can't change a single line of code. They are selling cars with someone else engineering inside. This isn't really about technology being too hard. It's a business model designed to keep you dependent. Three layers lock you in :) First, every new car programme needs Bosch to do setup work (Rs 10-30 crore). Second, you pay full price for software Bosch already developed for Volkswagen so Bosch gets paid twice for the same work. Third and this is the killer every time you want to change anything in the software, even something tiny, it costs around $500,000. So Indian OEMs simply stop trying to innovate. They accept whatever Bosch gives them. The calibration trap means tuning the car's brain for Indian conditions, how should the engine behave in Ladakh cold vs Chennai heat? Indian OEMs outsource even this to AVL in Austria. AVL reuses work they already did for European cars, charges India full price, and transfers zero knowledge. So Indian engineers never even learn how their own cars work from the inside. What Korea did is Hyundai faced the exact same situation in 1987. They set up Kefico as a joint venture with Bosch, learned everything from the inside, and by 2015 they owned the full technology themselves. The sequence was simple - first learn calibration (tuning) → then write your own software → then build your own hardware. It's a ladder. India never climbed the first rung. Why India didn't do this - It's not a talent problem Indian engineers design ECUs at Bosch offices worldwide. It's a combination of things like Indian OEMs won't fund Indian startups to develop alternatives. They demand that Indian suppliers first prove themselves in Europe before getting a chance at home (while European companies protect their own). Middle managers won't risk their careers backing a Pune startup when they can safely pick Bosch. India spends 0.64% of GDP on R&D vs Korea's 4.9%. Private sector funds only 36% of India's R&D, in Korea it's 79%. SEDEMAC - the one exception - One Indian company (IIT Bombay founders, Pune-based) actually makes ECUs for two-wheelers and generators. They have real IP, real patents, millions of units shipped. But even they couldn't break into passenger cars. Tata Motors is literally in the same city and doesn't use them. EVs are simpler to control than petrol/diesel engines. This should have been India's fresh start. Instead, Mahindra's new EV platform has Bosch (Germany), Valeo (France), BYD (China), Mobileye (Israel), Continental (Germany) - zero Indian ECUs. The dependency just migrated from ICE to EV with different foreign names. swarajyamag.com/technology/the…
R&D R&D R&D Real innovation ✅️ No more jugaad innovation ❌️
A tragedy is unfolding at AllenAI. Fs in the chat
Thank you GNLU. More updates later.
Regardless of what official position that BRICS as an organization will take on this whole Iran conflict, I do not foresee this Indian presidency of BRICS to be productive (not that BRICS was that productive anyways)
India's Reliance has taken advantage of the recently issued General License U to purchase 5 million barrels of Iranian crude, the first purchases of Iranian oil by an Indian buyer since 2019. The deal is worth around $500 million. Iran would not have sold this oil if it was going to be denied access to the revenue. But that does not mean proceeds will flow back to Iran. My guess based on the historic norm is that the oil was purchased with rupees and payment will be made to UCO Bank. Iran will use the money to purchase humanitarian goods like rice and generic medicines. India will get oil and probably safe transit for other vessels through the Strait. reuters.com/business/energ…
Notice one thing here: Ather and Ola aren’t protected (not yet) like Tata Motors or M&M. They aren’t spoilt brats like our License Raj dhandos who do negligible R&D and innovation, only knowing how to spend money on JVs or capex to capture volume. In India, most R&D and innovation is happening at new-age startups or in sectors that wouldn’t survive or grow without it (i.e., the pharma sector). I understand why the Indian elite wants to protect License Raj cronies, as they fund their elections. However, I don’t understand why, in this day and age, a section of the Indian populace still wants to protect these cronies.
We’re saying goodbye to the Sora app. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing. We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work. – The Sora Team
The 1.1 lakh capacity Narendra Modi Stadium, built at ₹800 crore, is now driving ₹3,000+ crore in economic activity through mega events, global concerts, tourism, and retail. With 10–12 marquee events annually, it’s triggering surge in hotels, flights, and local commerce and turning out to be city-level growth multiplier. @IndianExpress
An MoU by Invest UP is a preliminary step before detailed due diligence and project evaluation gets done. The MoU with Puch AI is similarly an initiation of the process by Invest UP to explore potential in the AI sector. MoUs are non-binding on the State Government. Any further progress including any Government permission, approval or license is subject to detailed evaluation of prospective investors proposal . Any prospective investor falling short of the above will automatically have their MoU terminated. Uttar Pradesh remains committed to transparent, responsible, and future-focused development.
It's so easy to think you're untalented, maybe even dumb, when really you're just unpracticed on some prerequisite skills. Reminds me of the time I tutored a Real Analysis student who hadn't gotten much practice with proof-writing beforehand. She thought she was gonna fail the class. She thought she might just not be cut out for it. But we just shored up some of those missing proof foundations and then she came out with a well-deserved A. And then she took Fourier Analysis the following year and crushed it. Didn't even need my help. There is also a flipside: it's very easy to think you're a genius, when really you're just better-practiced on prerequisite skills than everyone around you. That's actually a great situation to be in, provided that you recognize why things are going so well for you -- but if you conclude that "geniuses like me don't need much practice," then, well, your advantage is short-lived. The moral of this story is that prerequisite knowledge is intellectual capital and can take you from academic rags to riches -- or from riches to rags, if you squander it.
If Bhagat Singh were alive, he would be against any form of Hindi imposition. After all, he was a comrade who opposed every kind of hegemony.
