Hello, I am Priyanka Salve, CNBC’s first correspondent in India, write from Singapore. This week, see how the prosperous digital ecosystem in India attracts investments from major technology companies – the country’s digital user base and the talent group plays a major role.
India – 2025/05/13: In this illustrative form, the Meta logo is displayed on a smartphone with the Google logo in the background.
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This report from this week’s release from the CNBC newsletter “Inside India”. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
The big story
When Rinchen Wangdi Bhutia moved in 2016 from Sikkim in northeastern Sikkim to Kolkata, one of the country’s metro cities, was just a face in a crowd of people.
Potia left his institutional life and a cloud kitchen began in 2023. A year later, he began to publish short videos of his simple local meals. Strangers turned into followers and views of food orders. Follow success.
Today, he runs two restaurants, specialists in dumplings, in Kolkata. He has more than half a million followers, and he regularly hates excessive views.
The country has the largest number of users via social media platforms such as Facebook (350 million plus), Instagram (413.8 million) and YouTube video application (more than 467 million), according to Statista data. WhatsApp application It is said It has more than 500 million users in India.
The CEO of Openai Sam Altman said in February that India was the second largest market in the company.
Bhutia is part of the story of the digital growth in India that creates entrepreneurs, attract investments, attract global technology giants, and feed them in a large part of the giant talent collection and technology use users.
“India is a major center for the main talent – from the design of chips to artificial intelligence, so technology companies want to invest and put it there to benefit from a major resource,” said Baskar Chakrafurti, Dean of International Business at Fletcher School at Tafs University.
Between 2023 and 2025 to date, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple and their peers transferred tens of billions to India.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Chatgpt-Maker Openai was looking for local partners to build a data center in India with at least one capacity. This comes just a week after the company I launched the cheapest subscription plan399 rupees ($ 4.57) per month, in India.
“The acquisition of users in the western markets, while, in contrast to that, India offers a demographic swelling for users for the first time and a talent that can build, test and repeat on a large scale,” says Vivek Agarwal Global Policy Expert, a global policy expert at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Google and Dead On Friday, new partnerships were announced with Accreditation industries The Indian bloc also seeks to accelerate its push to artificial intelligence.
“We are excited to put artificial intelligence in the hands of more people and companies so that they can do unusual things,” said Google Sundar Pichai.
A study conducted by the Eighth of India University among 125 countries is classified as a digital -evolutionary momentum index. The index is a data-based evaluation for the progress of the digital economy over a period of sixteen years (2008-2023).
The country’s digital growth width is the unified payment interface in India or UPI, which operates immediate, low -cost payments, and based on mobile devices in India, which deals with about 640 One million transactions every day. He came to being only nine years ago. The Google Pay and Walmart phone, which uses UPI infrastructure, is among dominant Payment providers in India, according to data from the National Payments Foundation in India.
Numbers for growth
The description -owned WhatsApp, which also provides payment services, has struggled to make progress in the area of excessive competitive digital payments, despite the user base of more than 500 million.
“The volume on paper is not equal to an equal range in practice,” said Sanchit Ver Juggia, chief analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research.
Meta even obtained a 9.9 % stake in JIO Platform, ARM Digital Services for Reliace Industries, in 2020, for $ 5.7 billion. “By combining Jiomart, the small JIO initiative, with WhatsApp power, we can enable people to communicate with companies, shopping and buy products in the end in a smooth mobile experience,” Meta said during the announcement of the deal.
A strong local partner in JIO, who has a joint base in communications that exceed 500 million, could not help Meta to make WhatsApp to pay success in India. “The integration of Giomeart stumbles, partly because the Relination Retail GROOOF itself has not been scamped quickly as it promised,” says Gogia.
The NPCI data shows that WhatsApp had only 74 million transactions compared to Google Pay transactions approximately 7 billion.
But this did not prevent us from technical specialties from investing in India, including Meta.
Agarawal said: “India has become a basis for proof, as the Big Tech began in the long term, which results in clear profits,” Agarawal said.
The talent group in India has also established large foreign companies its global capacity centers in the country. India represents more than 50 % of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries around the world, with more than 1,600 operating centers, according to Consulting in the USA consulting in the United States.
These centers provide more incentives for technology companies looking for customers for institutions. “The growth of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in India makes it a great place to publish technical requests and serve a wide range of multinationals from India,” said Chirkravorte Tats.
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You need to know
Fix the tax structure. The Indian government moved on Wednesday to an official Reducing commodity and services tax It is expected to stimulate a variety of consumption elements and reduce the impact of American definitions.
Elephant-Dragon Tango. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the eleventh Chinese president at the Fifth Cooperation Organization Summit, Relationship improvement signal.
Turbin economy. India’s economy I grew faster than expected An annual average of 7.8 % per quarter until the end of June, supported by manufacturing, construction and services sectors.
– Vina Duvidi
Quote from the week
We are very positive in non -bank financial companies, whether on the lender or non -loan side … We are more positive in non -banking and non -banking companies, as we feel that huge alpha can be created over the three years to the next five, with a high penetration of the capital market and exposure to the living family.
Gotam Dougadand Director and Head of Research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services
In the market
India Elegant 50 The index closed marginally higher at 24,734, as it abandoned most gains by 1 % during the day on the back of a comprehensive repair process in the tax and services tax. The index has gained 4.6 % so far this year.
Indian government bonds returned for 10 years to 6.5 %.
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