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India's AI Story Is 'All Talk, Little Substance,' Says Bernstein (indiadispatch.com)

(Thursday September 04, 2025 @11:20AM (msmash) from the reality-check dept.)


Investment research firm Bernstein warned Thursday that India [1]faces a "strategic tech crisis" as US technology giants deploy predatory pricing strategies to lock up the Indian AI market. Perplexity Pro launched [2]free for one year to Airtel's 350 million subscribers while OpenAI [3]introduced a $5 monthly India subscription compared to $20 in the United States.

Bernstein analysts described regulatory "double standards" where foreign tech companies receive favorable treatment while domestic companies face what the firm called "crushing rules and government-led 'tech stacks' that make private business unviable." Private AI investment in India totaled $11.29 billion between 2013 and 2024 compared to $471 billion in the United States and $119 billion in China. From the report:

> When OpenAI, which is reportedly looking to set up a data center in India, announced the plans to launch a new office, it was met with another round of excitement -- "as if Open AI will hire all Indians at hefty salaries," the firm wrote in a note to clients Thursday. Bernstein analysts pour cold water on this excitement, dismissing it as a "repeat of the 90s" and arguing that the hype misses the fundamental power imbalance.

>

> "Anyone, we repeat anyone, can build a data center... This is the start of the dominance of US tech in Indian AI environment ensuring Indian entrepreneurs do not get a fighting chance to stay relevant. They will run on the sidelines - piggybacking on the US foundation models or maybe even the Chinese," they wrote.



[1] https://indiadispatch.com/p/bernstein-is-not-buying-india-ai-story

[2] https://indiadispatch.com/p/perplexity-pro-airtel-free-india

[3] https://slashdot.org/story/25/08/19/0333218/openai-launches-46-budget-ai-subscription-tier-in-india



But... (Score:2)

by slipped_bit ( 2842229 )

... what does Bernstain say?

"Investment research firm Bernstein..." (Score:1)

by Type44Q ( 1233630 )

What is it with the Scots always pushing snake oil??

Re: (Score:2)

by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

> Even with that much flowing into the country, look at the barbaric way the majority of their population lives because there is a grand total of zero effort to help out other Indian people by Indian people. They got their money, keep the peasants out of the cities, and "look at me and my clothing and cars and fancy house" is basically the culture over there

That's also the culture over here, except fewer and fewer people can afford those things, and a bunch of upper lower class people have been conned into believing that they are middle class because they're more than one or two paychecks away from being destitute — but still just one serious medical event away from bankruptcy.

Sounds like most of their IT industry (Score:3)

by Viol8 ( 599362 )

The smart indian geeks legged it to europe and north america leaving the idiots behind to create coding companies that give absurdly low estimates for work then absurdly low quality of said work. Luckily most western companies are wising up to this now.

Re: (Score:2)

by Compaq Disk Rereader ( 10425332 )

Every graduating class of MBAs thinks they have the key to finally paying loser devs the summer help wages they deserve.

Wait wait wait, surely I must be the first one to consider the hidden synergies of combining barely qualified indians, LLMs, and CASE tooling!!

We're not much better I remember on this very forum, 20 years ago, someone said FPGA gets trendy every few years as a new batch of grads hear about them. We simply have slightly less bloated egos (slightly) or else we'd naturally assume we should b

Indian staffing firms will not be spared (Score:1)

by Compaq Disk Rereader ( 10425332 )

AI is already killing the need for indian consulting companies, I'm sure like every cornered group of MBAs they'll make up excuses that the sky isn't as falling as it seems but the whole point of india is a billion studious people with a low cost of living. Even if AI falls far short of it's promises, they'd rather have one qualified domestic FTE wanking 20 bots into story points and binge drinking in the evenings than 20 barely qualified indians with LLMs.

A close friend of mine has been waking up at 2am

Builder.ai (Score:2)

by TWX ( 665546 )

I thought that builder.ai proved that "AI" stood for [1]Actually Indians [techspot.com].

[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/108173-builderai-collapses-after-revelation-ai-hundreds-engineers.html

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