A Dig at Indian Start-ups

India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal's comments in New Delhi about the country's start-up ecosystem triggered a massive debate on social media. 

On April 03, at the second Start-up Mahakumbh, a government-led start-up conclave, Goyal (right) warned that the country risks falling behind global peers unless entrepreneurs shift focus from quick commerce to high-impact innovation. 

Poking fun at the rise of food delivery apps, artisanal brands and online betting apps in the country, he compared them with the innovations being made by the "other side", which many took to mean China. He said that while "they" were making leaps in machine learning, robotics and building "next-gen factories that can compete with the rest of the world", India's start-ups were still largely focussed on lifestyle products like gluten-free ice creams. 

His remarks sparked a flurry of sharp reactions from sections of the start-up universe, for a sector that is prone to patting itself on the back, they serve a timely note of caution. They are a reality check for not only the private ecosystem − which encompasses sections of India Inc, universities, and private capital − but also the government which position themselves as a valuable stakeholder in the start-up story. 

To be sure, Goyal also praised the pace at which new businesses were popping up in the country, hailing India as the third-largest start-up ecosystem in the world. He also urged Indian investors to do more to support Indian creators. But he seemed to want to see more happen, and faster.

Still, there are successful start-ups (On scale, not profit) and which include Flipkart, Ola, Paytm, Zomato, and BYJU'S. These companies have not only disrupted traditional industries, but also become strong players in their respective sectors. 

According to Amit Gupta writing in LinkedIn on February 16, 2023, it has to be said that many of these start-ups continue to be loss-making and not sustainable even after years of existence. This is despite the fact that India is home to a massive population and market size, which presents a significant opportunity in itself. 

In contrast, the Chinese companies that are dominating the global headlines are involved in cutting edge high-tech research. They are competing in global markets, rivaling even US giants across a range of sectors like BYD (automobiles), TikTok (social media) and Shein (fast fashion).

India's Business Standard newspaper carried a write-up by Abhijeet Kumar on April 04, informing that China’s start-up dominance was not an accident − it was the result of deliberate government policies, aggressive funding, and a domestic market structured for scale. 

Unlike India, where start-ups face regulatory hurdles, China’s government actively fostered innovation. As a result, by 2023, China accounted for 40 percent of global venture capital funding, dwarfing India’s 5 percent. Beijing’s $1.4 trillion tech investment plan (2015–2025) far outstripped India’s $150 billion allocation. In 2024 alone, China slashed $361 billion in taxes and fees for high-tech firms, including $80.7 billion in R&D deductions.

Both India and China, with their approximately 1.4 billion-strong populations, offered start-ups a vast testing ground before expanding internationally. In 2024, Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales hit $203.6 billion − surpassing the value of India’s entire e-commerce market, which stood at $147.3 billion. Meanwhile, TikTok, developed by ByteDance, reached one billion users before entering Western markets, while India’s ShareChat still struggles to cross 400 million.

FYI:

I don't think we should discount India yet. I'm still optimistic that the country can rewrite its story. But for now, China remains in a different orbit − and India, for sure, faces a steep climb ahead.

Chinese Chipmakers and Cloud Providers Embrace DeepSeek

Chinese companies, from chipmakers to cloud service providers, are rushing to support DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence (AI) models, spurring analysts to even hail it a “watershed moment” for the industry. 

Chinese AI chipmakers – including Moore Threads, Tencent-backed Enflame, Baidu’s Kunlunxin and Hygon Information Technology, have declared that their computing clusters and accelerators would be able to support DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 models. 

“We pay tribute to DeepSeek”, Moore Threads headlined their post on WeChat, adding that progress by the firm’s models using domestically made graphic processing units could “set on fire” China’s AI industry. 

On February 01, Huawei Technologies, which also have their own line of AI chips, said they were working with AI infrastructure start-up SiliconFlow to make DeepSeek’s models available to customers on their Ascend cloud service. Their performance was comparable to models run on global, high-end chips, they added. 

“DeepSeek demonstrates that competitive large language models can be deployed on China’s ‘good-enough’ chips, easing reliance on cutting-edge US hardware”, Bernstein analysts said in a note on February 02, citing Ascend and planned chips from Cambricon and Hygon. 

The cloud arms of China’s biggest internet companies – Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent – also said they have made DeepSeek’s models accessible via their services. 

China has welcomed DeepSeek’s success, turning the start-up based in the eastern city of Hangzhou and the firm’s founder Liang Wenfeng (right) into pop culture celebrities. 

In fact, Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud services have also started offering DeepSeek’s models – but already, there are countries such Australia, Italy and the Netherlands which have blocked, or are investigating, DeepSeek’s AI app on concerns of privacy.

China's Alibaba Release AI Model Qwen 2.5-Max

While tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Google largely recovered Monday’s losses as investors speculated they could benefit from cheaper input costs, Nvidia’s shares remain depressed as experts question the conventional wisdom that expensive equipment is needed to produce AI models.

And on January 29, in a Q&A during ASML’s fourth-quarter earnings call – a session that was dominated by the sudden emergence of DeepSeek – President and CEO Christophe Fouquet (right) suggested onlookers shouldn’t have been so surprised by the arrival of a new player in the AI race. 

“I know some of you maybe were surprised in the last few days that a new company suddenly comes and wants to compete”, Fouquet said. “Well, I think we have to get used to that, because this is such an opportunity that there will be more and more players to grab this". 

He later added: “AI is a huge opportunity. Therefore, I think you should expect to see a few elephants in the room in the next few months, or few years, because everyone will want to be in”.

He's so right, y'know!

On that same day too, Chinese tech company Alibaba released a new version of their Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model that they claim surpasses the highly-acclaimed DeepSeek-V3. 

The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max's release, on the first day of the Chinese New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also their domestic competition. 

"Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms... almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B", Alibaba's cloud unit said in an announcement posted on their official WeChat account, referring to OpenAI and Meta's most advanced open-source AI models. 

The January 10 release of DeepSeek's AI assistant, powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model, as well as the January 20 release of their R1 model, has shocked Silicon Valley and caused tech shares to plunge, with the Chinese startup's purportedly low development and usage costs prompting investors to question huge spending plans by leading AI firms in the United States. 

But DeepSeek's success has predictably led to a scramble among their domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models. 

Two days after the release of DeepSeek-R1, TikTok owner ByteDance released an update to their flagship AI model, Doubao-1.5-pro, which they claimed outperformed Microsoft-backed OpenAI's o1 in AIME, a benchmark test that measures how well AI models understand and respond to complex instructions. 

This echoed DeepSeek's claim that their R1 model rivalled OpenAI's o1 on a number of performance benchmarks.

China's Big Impact on the Fortune Global 500

For the first time, China-based companies are making a bigger impact than American companies on the Fortune Global 500. 

As many as 124 companies based on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong appeared on this year’s ranking, exceeding the 121 companies from the US – and the addition of Taiwan-based firms brings the tally to 133. 

The world's 500 largest companies generated a combined revenue of $33.3 trillion and profit of $2.1 trillion in 2019. Together, this year’s Fortune Global 500 companies employ 69.9 million people worldwide and are represented by 32 countries. 

In the Top 4, already three of the behemoths are from China. Top positioned Walmart ($523.9 million in revenues) was followed by Chinese companies Sinopec Group ($407.0 million), State Grid Corp of China ($383.9 million) and China National Petroleum Corp ($379.1 million) in second, third and fourth place respectively. 

And among Internet companies on the list – 4 out of the 7 are also from China. Alibaba rose the most to 132nd place this year, up 50 positions from 2019. JD.com, Tencent and Xiaomi grabbed the 102nd, 197th and 422nd spots. The other 3 are Amazon (#9), Alphabet (#29) and Facebook (#144).

Two clear facts can be discerned. The first is the sheer gravity-defying rise of China as a leader of global business. There were precisely zero Global 500 companies based in mainland China in 1990 when Fortune magazine began the survey. Today there are more giant for-profit enterprises there than anywhere else on earth. 

The second – and equally dramatic – narrative is the steep rise of global trade in general, which has been just as inexorable, it seems, as China’s ascent. 

In the first running of the Global 500, world trade represented less than 39% of global GDP, according to the World Bank; in 2018 (the latest year available), such trade accounted for more than 59% of our planet’s economic output. 

"The quickly expanding number of Chinese firms reflects China's growing economic significance and its engagement in global business", said Lei Xinjun, an associate research fellow specializing in international trading and investment at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Economics. 

China is not to be ignored. Not now, not ever.

11 Million Coronavirus Cases

Again, it took just 3 days for coronavirus cases worldwide to jump from 10.5 million to 11 million yesterday. 

When we zero in on the numbers todate, the United States, Brazil and India topped 2.8 million, 1.5 million and 630,000 cases respectively – they are ranked Nos. 1, 2 and 4 in the world. 

In fact, those three countries representing the Top 3 in daily infections contributed 57.2% of the world’s daily total – as of yesterday – and which indicates the severity of the Covid-19 situation there.

The US merits special mention because things have taken a turn for the worse. Its infection curve has risen in 40 of the 50 states and according to data compiled by the volunteer COVID Tracking Project, all but 10 states are showing an upswing in newly reported cases over the past 14 days.

Among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesia and Philippines continue to reel from spiralling coronavirus cases – as opposed to the other eight ASEAN countries:

And if I may add, Brazil and Peru have witnessed more than 60,000 and 10,000 deaths on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

"996" Hours

Alibaba’s billionaire co-founder Jack Ma (left) advocates the “996" work culture – and this is currently the subject of popular debate in the China media. 

For those who don’t know, it means working from 9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week. 

On Friday, Ma even called the opportunity to work "996" hours a "blessing". 

Entrepreneurs such as him may have claimed with bloated pride that long work hours are part of their success stories – but these bosses forget that they work for themselves and their reward is seen by their accumulated wealth that they keep amassing. So, it is so easy to advice others to slave over their jobs – and in the process, make even more money for their companies – which in turn benefit their bosses. Bosses like Ma. 

BTW, Ma’s net worth in 2019 amounts to $39.7 billion. 

Anyway, please listen to this beautiful paean to our planet: "In This Together" by Ellie Goulding & Steven Price. 

Share the wonder of the extraordinary place we call home. From exotic jungles to the deepest seas, open our eyes to the connections we all share: