A trillion-dollar tech momentum – Opinion News

By Sindhu Gangadharan

For decades, India has powered the world’s digital ambitions from behind the scenes. Today, it is stepping boldly into the spotlight as an architect of the global digital future. With a GDP over $4 trillion, India’s growth is not just about economic scale. It’s about digital transformation as a strategy that is inclusive, innovation-led, and designed for the world. At the heart of the transformation lies a powerful engine of innovation, one that has quietly matured into a global tech nerve centre: Karnataka. It’s capital, Bengaluru, has become a launchpad for India’s trillion-dollar tech ambitions.

We are no longer a nation of coders. We are becoming a nation of creators designing, deploying, and scaling solutions that address real-world problems. A defining example of this shift is Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a domestic innovation now powering 48.5% of the world’s real-time payment transactions. More than fintech, it’s a story about trust. UPI showed how a secure, interoperable, real-time payment system could be built for a billion people. Today, it is being adopted by countries like France, Singapore, and the UAE.

Karnataka: From Back Office to Boardroom

India is home to over 1,700 global capability centres (GCCs) employing nearly 1.9 million. But these are not traditional delivery centres. They are innovation powerhouses, where critical work in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and core product engineering are being designed and deployed. Over the past two decades, Karnataka and particularly Bengaluru has evolved from being India’s back-office to becoming the boardroom of global enterprise tech. With over 875 GCCs, the state now hosts more than a third of all GCCs in India, quietly powering the digital engines of Fortune 500 companies.

In 2023, Karnataka became the first Indian state to roll out a dedicated GCC policy—signalling to the world that India’s ambition is to lead the next era of enterprise innovation. The GCC policy is targeting 1,000 centres and 350,000 new jobs by 2029, backed by incentives, infrastructure, and policy stability. The blueprint included fast-track regulatory clearances, plug-and-play campuses in emerging tech zones like Whitefield, Electronic City, and Devanahalli, R&D incentives for deep-tech work, and dedicated support for women in tech, environment, social, and governance compliance, and skilling programmes. This wasn’t just about offering tax breaks, but also creating a fertile ground where global firms could innovate, hire, and grow seamlessly. In Karnataka, you find everything an innovation-driven enterprise needs—top-tier talent, thriving start-up accelerators, global R&D labs, and a pool of seasoned product leaders who understand scale and agility.

As the world rethinks its digital infrastructure amid rising geopolitical and economic complexity, Karnataka offers a scalable, sustainable, and strategic innovation corridor. Its rise as the epicentre of GCC evolution mirrors India’s transformation from a country that once powered digital systems from behind the curtain, to one now writing the script for what’s next.

India’s Digital Flywheel: From SaaS to Sovereign Tech

At the same time, India’s cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecosystem is booming. Indian SaaS firms are serving global clients across industries, with exports expected to contribute tens of billions of dollars. According to a McKinsey report this year, India’s ~1,000 SaaS firms generated around $2.6 billion in revenue in 2021, and is projected to reach $50-70 billion by 2030. A SaaSBoomi-McKinsey study confirms this growth trajectory and highlights the addition of supportive capital and generative AI integration as key accelerators. The rapid expansion of data centres and localised cloud zones has made India a digital springboard, not just a delivery hub but an innovation lab. India’s data-centre capacity, which stood at roughly 950 megawatt in 2024, is expected to nearly double by 2026. Driving this surge is India’s digital public infrastructure, which the World Economic Forum recognised last year for supporting financial inclusion, competition, and equitable economic growth.

In addition to UPI, platforms like Aadhaar and DigiLocker are empowering millions with identity, payments, and data access. These tools have deepened financial inclusion and spurred new digital businesses, from micro-lending to telemedicine. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the journey is how bottom-up it is. Over 800 million Indians are online today, nearly half of them from rural areas. 

To build on the momentum, India is uniquely positioned to accelerate progress on a few critical points. First, there’s an opportunity to foster stronger collaboration between academia, industry, and government. By empowering top universities in deep-tech research, we can unlock the next wave of innovation. Second, India can scale its innovation-to-globalisation pipeline moving from creating cutting-edge technology to shaping leading solutions. With investments in deep-tech sectors like quantum computing, robotics, and advanced semiconductors supported by sovereign innovation funds and high-tech corridors, India can also set benchmarks.

India’s path to becoming a $10-trillion economy by 2032 will not be led by traditional models alone. It will be built through digital-first thinking, tech-led inclusion, and collaborative innovation. A convergence of factors—a young, skilled population, trusted digital infra, thriving start-up ecosystem, and a government that sees innovation as nation-building—makes this vision credible. The momentum is visible in the deep-tech breakthroughs emerging from R&D labs, start-ups, GCCs, and public-private partnerships. Karnataka exemplifies how India can scale up this model. India’s next leap won’t be defined by scale alone, but by the strength of its ideas, the depth of its talent, and the boldness of its vision.

The writer is MD, SAP Labs India, and chairperson, NASSCOM.

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