As Grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa makes history becoming the 1st Indian to win the Norway Chess title, I’m reminded of this gem of a picture of his mum Nagalakshmi watching him being interviewed a few years ago.
Imagine her today. ♥️
India has cracked the hard engineering of making a chip. It can now be designed, fabricated and packaged on Indian soil - capabilities built in under four years.
But then the harder half is just beginning, and it's got to do with the commerce of chips.
For example
- Vervesemi asked Dholera's own tech partner PSMC for a quote. It came back 20% above the Taiwan/Korea fabs they already use.
- Indian packaging houses quoted 3x foreign prices; one needed 6+ months just to build the tooling.
Founder's verdict:
Indian packaging is off by 3–5x - "not ten or fifteen per cent."
Where Indian semi story is stalling:
- India installs 50 million smart meters a year. Every chip inside is imported.
- Vervesemi has a qualified Indian alternative, already shown to the Power Ministry. No mechanism exists to get it into the meter.
Why? Product companies - the Qualcomm/Broadcom/MediaTek layer that turns a design into a line on a manufacturer's bill of materials - doesn't exist in India yet.
A single fab needs $4–5 billion of volume to break even. We're not sure India is putting that on the table yet.
What the next phase has to fix:
- Preferential foundry pricing until Indian fabs scale
- An L1-tender carve-out so Indian chips aren't auto-disqualified for costing 2x in the early years
- A BIS rule counting active-component content, not just resistors and connectors
- Expected in policy form before July 2026
This @swarajyamag deep-dive by @dikshayadav_ & Ankit Saxena is a slightly LONG read but it kinda gives you the inner picture of where India stands today.
https://t.co/tsD1dWcHa7
This is what needs to be fixed. No politician on either side of aisle seems keen on stopping the rot.
Hint: look at the investment of politicians in coaching centres and engineering/medical colleges.
On #WorldBicycleDay, riding my cycle in Vimannagar, Pune; these dangerous spots (potholes, hawkers, broken roads) show how PMC has completely ruined Pune’s cycle tracks.
Where are the safe dedicated lanes we were promised? This negligence is unacceptable @navalMH
Share your worst PMC ruined cycling spots in Pune 👇
@PMCPune@mohol_murlidhar@VIRBIKE thanks for your cycle 😉
#PuneCycling #SaferRoads #Vimannagar #PMC_Pune #RideSafe #WorldBicycleDay #VIRBike
Well put. The reason I am very sceptical of those haranguing so called dhandhos on R&D. Businesses respond to incentives. The Indian state is pathetic at incentivising long term investment because it loves to tinker for the sake of tinkering. Only people who need to be harangued are the Babus.
Look at this BJP minister.😭
At a site where 21 people were burnt alive inside a hotel, in an area where BJP-controlled MCD has allegedly ignored all safety norms for years, & he cannot even walk on a muddy road, where citizens walk daily.
He seems more worried about his clothes getting dirty, visit for formality.
An entire family from Gurugram was wiped out, yet the priority appears to be optics, not accountability..☹️
China did the same thing, and did it smarter. India bleeds foreign capital dry, earns its reputation as a graveyard for FDI, and ends up with neither the investors nor the champions. China kept the capital coming and the profits flowing, welcomed the joint ventures, then used the technology and supply chains those firms brought in to build CATL and BYD into companies that now outsell them.
Neither country invented this. Hamilton drafted it for the US in 1791; Japan and Korea ran it for forty years. Hostility to foreign money was never the point. You welcome it, you learn from it, and you outgrow it.
So the thread wasn't an attack on India. It said India plays this game, just badly. You're arguing with the compliment.😂
@crab_miller Most countries including the US have this structure. The logic is that you want to encourage foreign capital investment in the country as much as possible. Taxing CG of foreigners is insane, one would think India was awash in capital and wanted to reduce inbound 😭
Bharatnatyam was revived by the Brahmin lady Rukmini Arundale when converted shoshits of TN wanted to finish it in the name of devadasi emancipation. Similarly Odissi was revived by Kelucharan Mahapatra etc. As a result, most classical dancers are upper castes today and they cry about that as well. Wtf is he even talking about?
Nepotism is the reason why Bharat is getting destroyed! It's not enough that our Hon'ble PM shri Narendra Modiji only remove Dharmendra Pradhan ji, but pass a law that kids of netas & babus have to study in government schools & parents and immediate family of netas & babus have to be treated only in govt hospitals!
Near my parents house, locals chopped down a 50 year old huge native Indian neem tree and replaced it with an Arabian Palm tree.
No wonder the effect of summer is getting worse every year in India !
Arrest that officer who came to do the fire inspection and went quietly after taking a bribe. Arrest that corrupt municipal official who gave the NOC to the building.
But that's not going to happen. This guy Bajaj will be in the news for a few days, and everyone will forget about the actual issue.
Corruption has become the national character of India.
Companies built on regulatory arbitrage can't do innovation.
Reason: The moment they run into a bottleneck, instead of solving the problem, they will turn to regulatory arbitrage.
That said, there is innovation, in how regulatory arbitrage is applied.
Samsung and Hynix compete against the world. Indian """chaebols""" take technology from abroad, and sell domestically at a markup. I don't know why you guys are so dishonest.
People wonder why indian companies cannot compete with China. This single chart explains 90% of the reason. Remaining 10% can be attributed to better infrastructure, logistics etc
Americans did "Death to India" street chimping before Indians could do "Death to America" street chimping that typically happens in this part of the world (though not in India).
Savour the W.
Municipal corruption and unplanned development with political connivance is like a never ending pandemic in India. It is as big, if not bigger, a threat as terrorism. More Indians may be loosing their lives as a result of municipal corruption than terrorism. Latest example in Malviya Nagar restaurant fire in Delhi which burnt alive 21 people because a hotel with a licence to run 6 bed and breakfast rooms was instead running 25 rooms including many in the basement, which is an impossible task to perform unless you have the local Municipal officers and politicians on your payroll.
When will Indian bureaucracy understand that education of your sons & daughters, your junkets in West is not important than India’s national interests. Dhandho Maxers over the decades have compromised India’s power of resistance. Brick by Brick Washington has infiltrated like termites eat a house walls from inside. This needs immediate treatment not band aids.
The US is out to destroy our economy, from H1B, IT Giants to Sucking Precious Capital away to Deny Technologies to sanction energy supply chains to abet Pakistan & to do coups in neighbourhood to imposing tariffs to trample Indian Export surpluses. The Post 1991 Era is of Globalisation is over !
Wake up Kumbhakaran ! See whats happening around us. Absolutely ridiculous grow some spine to stand up to national interests !