I think the current situation of India is similar and can be compared to the DotCom bubble of '90s (in US). In Bengaluru it is said that, in almost every home you will find one CEO of a startup.
I might be wrong but just thinking out loud.
For example:
PhonePe app - It's just a payment transfer app by Flipkart (although it is much better than GPay, in terms of usage speed) - its current valuation is around 7-8B+ USD. I don't get the much reason. There are no intermediary charges as PhonePe uses UPI Payment Interface (https://www.npci.org.in/product-overview/upi-product-overvie...)
I have always suspected the beefed up valuations of payment apps in India related to lack of regulations in place for use data protection and privacy. Most of these apps seem to be making money on some sort of data driven business models.
If that is true, the valuations do make sense. If you can provide purchase power metrics for half a billion users, a $7B valuation might start to seem modest.
Yeah. For example, Google pay also needs your location information and access to your contact lists in order to conduct any transaction. Unfortunately, the government (NPCI) owned BHIM app is plagued with all kinds of performance issues, and the transactions often fail. Otherwise, I wouldn't even have considered the Google or Flipkart owned payment apps.
Irony that you're downvoted for staying a very relevant fact. Most of these startups that have raised huge funds are also burning cash like anything. And established startups like Oyo and Zomato are facing backlash from their business partners and couldn't expand to venture into new areas to find profitability.
Profitability is still a very long way for most of these b2c startups
The money comes in from businesses who are offered loans based on the transaction volume PhonePe sees. Online businesses that use "Pay with PhonePe" links have to pay commission. In the broad sense, if it scales, it's a pretty decent business.
> Online businesses that use "Pay with PhonePe" links have to pay commission
Can you please share, any relevant or merchant integration link which says about transaction charges.
I don't think there are transactional charges, at least in beginning (I have not digged deep) but saying as per UPI.
UPI service is directly by banks (and government) (transfer from user's bank to merchant's bank without intermediary).
I can understand that very small transaction fees can be levied in future because PhonePe, Gpay may provide more business to these merchants as their user base grows.
Why I am saying very small? Unlike dispute resolution in PayPal kind of platform (which holds money) here it is much difficult to provide similar resolution to end-user, as payment is directly done to merchant.
But. It is B-2-B and B-2-B is mostly driven by trust, loyalty and partnerships, unlike end-users in India who runs after app providing new offer(s).
Such B-2-B business can change the end-user behaviour in terms of loyalty. So that may be it. But there are so many apps for same payment interface, and I can imagine that there can be just an app which helps merchant receive payment from end-user without any additional fees (0.0000).
I really really hope the Indian "startups" aren't closet selling $2 for $1. Given the slew of discounts, cashbacks, and offers, I am left to wonder if at the cost of growth, the fund management has gone to the wolves.
The Indian consumer is very fickle and always shops for cheapest alternatives and looks for the best deals. I'm yet to see any kind of loyal behaviour, though, I must say, they prefer to trust only the bigger brands (in terms of presence) when they do occasionally spend big.
Another symptom is a lot of businesses acting like software startups riding the wave, when in reality, as a reductionist argument, could be simply classified as companies that get mobile and internet.
It also isn't uncommon for the business to exploit the low income wage structure to improve margins. Worker rights, contractor rights, in this gig economy is absent.
That's not to say some of these startups aren't delivering real value. They are... but race to the bottom seldom ends well for countries plagued with corruption, income inequality, and unemployment; and burderned with looming humanitarian crisis.
In my personal opinion, businesses serving other starups / enterprises (Zscaler, Cloudflare, Brex, Stripe, GitHub, slack, aws et al) remain the most secure of the current lot.
I don't think this disproportionate infusion of captial is going to end well: There do exist super valuable businesses but I highly doubt if they can justify their hype when they do go public. The investors are usually smart, but I hope they don't get dragged into hopeless optimism or become desperate.
Some engs and mgrs arguing the Indian market is better than Canada are overestimating their monetary gains and grossly underestimating the environmental, political, and societal benefits, imho.
I love this argument, there’s a lot of nuance to unwrap here.
I see a lot of India startup cofounders who are really smart but fail to understand the challenges (often out of their control) that are in their way of making their businesses sustainable.
Aside from the political, regulatory and socioeconomic challenges, India has a huge void to fill in terms of energy needs, manufactured goods, labor productivity and infrastructure before the economy becomes efficient enough to support high level services. The startup ecosystem, barring a few companies in logistics, is not focused on making any tangible improvements in productivity in the larger economy, for example, to start moving people away from agriculture.
This is really impressive: "It’s fascinating turnaround for the nation, which just 10 years ago had a very small startup ecosystem. In a recent interview with TechCrunch, Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma recounted the early days of One97, the parent firm of Paytm, and how difficult it was for him to raise a few hundred thousand dollars."
The USA took literally all of India's top engineering talent for the past ~25 years, but thankfully that trend is reversing now. While improvements in standard of living, more urbanization, emergence of a real middle class, more local opportunities etc. are definitely all valid reasons for this, I believe the biggest one is that there is no path to US residency or citizenship for an Indian today. Even those educated at top universities there have to eventually come back (and that is great!).
Not sure that it's necessarily great. I love my home country and all but I hate that I don't have the same freedom of movement other Nationals seem to have just by birth no matter how hard I work for it.
I stay in Canada. My parents are from India and my in-laws are European. My in-laws basically pack their suitcase and turn up to visit us. Meanwhile my parents had their visa rejected twice, we spent close to $10k on legal fees and lost couple of flight tickets (can't apply for visa unless you show flight tickets but visa is not guaranteed) and my brother was never ever allowed to visit us. And it's extremely common for other skilled immigrants (even if they are citizens) in Canada as well to have their family visit visa refused.
Paradoxically, US tourist visa was the easiest for all of us.
When I hear people complain about how the "Government prioritizes immigrants over the local people", it's just mind boggling how they come to this conclusion?
I wasn't aware that tourist visas for parents in Canada can be very difficult. I was planning on applying for PR to Canada precisely because I thought it'd be easier to have parents over there (what is this thing called a Super Visa?) - does this change if you have a PR?
It doesn't change even if you are a citizen. Super Visa takes a very long time and is for longer duration. All in all its a draw of the luck, give it a shot.
Sure but one of the clause is "satisfy an officer that you will leave Canada at the end of your stay" and the best way to do it is via a ticket especially if you are retired/self-employed. At the end of the day everything is a crap shoot and it depends on the visa officer's mood.
The whole process of biometrics, documents, evidence, itinerary , tickets, forms took me 4 months for a two weeks visit of my parents to see me.
It's highly enraging and I agree with parent poster that birth country heavily restricts their movement even if they have the resources or are skilled.
My Vietnamese gf was just approved for a Visa to visit the US, so we figured lets also try Canada since US was no problem... and then denied to Canada for exactly that reason. Her response was priceless... 'Why would I want to live in Canada?'
At least in VN, you pay a broker a couple hundred to supply the paperwork and the deal is that if denied, the broker does the next attempt for free. We will just try again after her trip to the US. The whole point at least for Vietnamese is just to get a record of travel (and coming back) so that it makes it easier to get visas to other countries.
Freedom of movement will happen when the countries are on equal footing. India has a lot of problems to solve before that can be a reality, and it can only do so with the help of its best and brightest.
Just curious ... Does hn have some kind of system that parses short comments (and other types that does not fall into guidelines) and presents it to the mods for flagging? Because the alternative that mods will be reading all the comments is tedious ...
Already started happening. I’m already a data point, and I know a few more. The generation going to grad school now is no longer thinking of settling in the states as their primary option; it is too cumbersome for most.
Salaries for top talent in Bengaluru are better than almost everywhere on earth except the US. While that may or may not last, the immigration process is still very painful and there are many more opportunities here than before.
That's very exciting and a great and maybe leading indicator for India. I really hope the wealth and expertise that flows from that can help India's economy grow fast like in China.
200k CAD is roughly comparable to 3 million INR in PPP terms, and that salary is for senior folks. Most senior engineers at Google Bangalore/Hyderabad or well established software companies are likely to make more than that.
Both might be considered to be salaries for remote offices of American companies or internationally funded startups. But if I look at the market in general, I’d rather be a software engineer in India than in Canada. The market is too big and the possibilities are too varied to ignore, even considering all the known problems (Canada might also have some of its own, I’m sure).
I know the parent talked about salary but that's not the only important factor. The reason for coming back to India could be spending time with old parents(who usually don't like moving to other countries at old age), kids' future, and weather.
I completely agree that those are important factors too (sometimes much more so than salaries), but good salaries, type of work and first-world benefits are usually the reasons why people emigrate in the first place (often leaving family and good weather behind), which is why I talked about those.
The more India closes the gap on these, the less incentive there is for people to move.
Indian tech startups have already raised $11.3B -- the new financing rounds of Swiggy, Zomato, and Paytm if they happen this year and if it is indeed of $3B size would make Indian tech startup's raise this year to over $14.3B.
We're currently having issues hiring in Bangalore. We've been looking for a ML Infra person to help during non-US hours.
Unfortunately hiring for such a position is bimodal in that market, you've got people with substantial experience really know their stuff, most of whom are getting snapped up by startups who pay much better, and then you've got the people who just threw ML on their LinkedIn to get into your search and can't tell you what a linear regression is.
Even if you pay half the amount you pay avg (let's say 60K USD) in US, that will be very very good amount for an Indian living in India (30K USD/year is very good for living in India).
So, if you expect good work and don't want to pay even the amount which is equivalent to what an entry-level developer in US might get, then you will never get good developers.
OK. I don't know about how much developer take in Ukraine. But my comparison was from US.
Since there's a lot of investment going on, by startups and giants like Google, Apple, Amazon etc who are hiring a lot in India, it is difficult to get good devs easily because devs will see few things even before trying for interview,like
1. Company's product and how it aligns with their perspective
2. Brand
3. Monetary value
(not in any order)
And these companies will keep on paying large amount of money because it will still be cheaper than what they pay in US. These giants will give a brand recognition. And as we all know, these companies have amazing/challenging work too.
So smart talent gets occupied and is hard to snatch from such giants.
Exactly! I have lost count of how many times people on HN rant about quality of "Indian software engineers" when they are paying so less that they get bottom of the barrel. And they make quick stereotype out of that experience without any introspection.
So when there are specific jobs that have scarcity and salaries are raised, many managers literally have no experience with that and don't know how to hire in a competitive market.
I've been in the banking industry in Asia, where the compensation is well above the average local.
The average quality of the Indian engineers (in banking), is unfortunately pretty abysmal.
The problem, I think, is their bias towards to hiring their own. Banking IT can become absolutely dominated by Indians, to the point where Indians can staff > 90% of IT positions in countries where they are a minority. The average quality of the Indians in there are pretty bad.
The difference can be seen clearly in companies that enforce some kind of diversity quota. The average quality of the Indians in there is noticeably higher by a wide margin. These companies are unfortunately a minority.
That's a component and a big component of it is the non-technical managers and wannabe founders that are working with the indian software engineerings and failing to articulate anything in anyway for any engineer to accurately deliver upon.
This skill is likely what enabled you to do consulting. Understanding and critiquing what your building is a really important part of being an engineer, but it's relatively rare - which is a shame.
A reductive view that isn’t quite correct. In a healthy job market there should be a smooth range of work in a field from lower value and lower pay up to higher value and higher pay. An uneven distribution means there are companies who struggle to justify the salary demands of an overqualified person because the work or the business model supporting the work doesn’t benefit from the surplus of value that employee brings. There’s nothing wrong with being that kind of company. In time the median skill level of Indian engineers will increase and solve this.
We're offering 90 percentile compensation for Bangalore, we have excellent engineers in our offices there already. I'm just complaining about the bimodal nature of ML hiring in general. General software development is a bit more linear.
I always found the term “Foodies” strange. Given that we are hardwired to enjoy food and literally need it to survive, something is terribly wrong with the person’s health if they’re not a “Foodie”. Have you met someone who says they hate food and they only have it because their bodies need it to survive?
Indians are no more foodies than the Americans or the Italians or the Japanese. Food is a central aspect of basically all cultures.
Being a foodie isn’t about liking to eat, foodie is about enjoying different cuisines and having a discerning taste. Some people are okay with pizza/fries/burgers of any style, while a foodie would seek out specific characteristics and generally want more than just carbs/salt/sugar.
I’ve met people that go to a big city and stick with eating from the chains they know from home. They like eating, but they wouldn’t fall under foodie, as opposed to someone who is researching different types of food or cooking them and using various spices and ingredients to add flavor.
>'Being a foodie isn’t about liking to eat, foodie is about enjoying different cuisines and having a discerning taste."
Discerning taste? In other words conspicuous consumption. Foodies seek out whatever the hype is.
It's always interesting to me how self-described foodies seems to know very little about actual food. Ask a foodie to name their favorite recipes, about braising vs poaching, making a pan sauce, when blueberries are in season and they will likely not have much to say. Being a "foodie" is just a byword for consumerism. It's neither a skill or a hobby. It's just eating out.
I feel like this is a very narrow, elitist view of the world. Even folks who are not “foodie” in this definition given the opportunity to try new foods, they will.
There is something about the term “Foodie” that bothers me because it’s such a general thing that applies to 7 billion people in the world.
I can understand if a person is a musician or a doctor or something substantial they’d have to do to attain that title. What do you think of the term “Chef” or a “Cook” or a “Restaurant critic”? There is definitely more specificity.
Foodie is a bullshit term for people that like to eat good food - basically all 7 billion people. It bothers me because I am an air-breathing enthusiast or as they say it a “Breathie”. I have a discerning smell for breathing air from various countries.
>> Even folks who are not “foodie” in this definition given the opportunity to try new foods, they will.
Not to be argumentative, but I fail to understand how you think this applies to everyone. For example, recently me and some friends were looking for a place to eat. Search turned up an Ethiopian restaurant that sounded interesting (none of us had any familiarity w/ the cuisine). Most of the group wanted to go to try it, but one friend flatly refused- he would rather just go to a chain place. Which is fine, not everyone enjoys trying new things and would prefer comfort foods.
Me and another of the group ended up going to the Ethiopian place later, and while it was excellent if we had drug the reluctant friend along it wouldn't have been fun for him (no silverware, just the flatbread).
I get that you find the term irratating, as I think it is almost as annoying as 'maker', but foodie connotes more than just 'someone who enjoys food'. Foodie describes someone who makes a partial hobby out of the act of consuming food. I hate the term b/c English already has an appropriated term that describes this better- gourmand. There is a difference between enjoying eating and being discerning about what one eats and being able to critique what is wrong/right with a dish.
“Maker” bugs me as well! You have some good points and I get that “Foodie” is a term for enthusiasts of various foods. The way it’s used is not in a good way - Where I live (Silicon Valley), there are so many kinds of restaurants and cuisines to be had that being a “Foodie” is a dull hobby.
you have an interesting observation that has a good point but the premise is just so wrong.
most people in the world have very undiscerning palettes and many of those people absolutely would not be interested in trying new foods.
foodie is not a negative term, so nobody is bothered by it. and colloquially foodies are a distinctive group of people that have gravitated towards a set of foods outside of what's common their original culture/region.
if you live in a world where that's the default, congratulations. since thats not the default, you're the weird one.
Given that Indians have a vast range of food restrictions they certainly aren't exploring as much as, say, a typical person could. In fact, you can't even get a beef steak in large parts of India.
As a person whose parents emigrated from India and who used to live in Silicon Valley... yes, lots of people are not foodies and just ingest organic matter to survive... see the 'success' of brands like soylent and huel. It's disgusting, but people like it.
My wife had several colleagues complain to her that they wouldn't eat food if it were not for their girlfriends insistence.
Well I didn’t mean any disrespect to other nationalities but merely commenting on popularity of those two startups.
Is there anything you want to add about my query?
I work at Ather. Currently, the customers are loving the product and we are booked till first quarter of next year in Bangalore & Chennai. We have done 5 software updates to the vehicle since launch in Bangalore. Planning to launch in couple of other cities by second quarter 2020 probably.
Ather is not only going to face competition from incumbents in the ICE scooter vertical, it is going to face competition from cheap Chinese scooters that are being tested and assembled all across small workshops in India. I think the cheaper scooters will do really well with price sensitive and slightly less brand conscious customers in tier 3 cities.
Ather has been doing an amazing job with their first vehicle, I'd definitely purchase one of I were still in Bangalore. I have high hopes for more in the future from them.
Ather Energy will have stiff competition from Bajaj's new offering. Bajaj already has decades of manufacturing experience, tons of capital, and a trusted brand name.
I'm afraid given the lack of awareness on what exactly UPI is (without considering usage) and the ability of politicians to kill projects for bribes, it may be eventually replaced by the wallet model. Corruption is a huge issue in India which contributes to loyal users eventually leaving the platform. Zomato, Swiggy and UberEats have had huge growth over the last year but I see a lot of regular users (office goers, bachelors living alone or with other bachelors...) thinking hard before ordering food. The number of quality restaurants are in less ratio and there is only a subset of them being consistent. A huge portion of this quality restaurants offer cuisines not Indian (Thai, Chinese, Italian, American..) which is not preferred routinely. My guess would be, growing up most are accustomed to Indian cuisine and the cost factor. Majority of the restaurants cater to offers and provide cheap food and lack basic hygiene and food preparation standards. This "restaurants" (most of them have now converted to takeaway only) should have been closed after inspection(s) but bribe and stay alive. This startups have enabled this restaurants to thrive and profit just by providing cheap food and cutting costs (waiters, restaurant space...). Most of this "quality restaurants" have always had delivery options and so this startups are not providing much value to them or consumers. Unless better food preparation standards are followed along with it being transparent loyal customers will be a tiny minority and majority will try to exploit the offers and leave. This is amplified (anecdotal, not verified statistically) by health issues of frequent users due to poor quality food.
Providing cheap daal, rice and butter chicken is a recipe for a race to the bottom. I can see why, as a restaurant owner, you might not want to cater to that market. There's more profit in going after the customers who are looking for a new experience and will pay for quality and exoticness.
IMO the biggest Indian startups are dramatically reducing the cost of urban living. The fact that India's cities are heavily disorganised counter intuitively helps in this.
The other sectors which is mostly overlooked but just getting started are military startups. IMO this should also scale dramatically over the next decade.
This number might be a record but my prediction is that it would rapidly climb higher over the next decade or so.
More like $30-$40 billion not $200 billion. The current PPP multiplier is somewhere between 3 and 4.
PPP is most useful when looking at domestically manufactured items and services. When looking at anything that needs to be imported, normal exchange rates are a much better tool. In fact due to import duties in India, many international goods are more expensive in India that in most of the west.
Everything speculated here is VC money and financial bubble with unrelaible financial values. Zomato, uber, paytm, flipkart throw discounts at the rate of losses. May be few can survive at the end. This hurts a lot for SMB too.
Paytm will be one of the leaders with the new Ecomm model. I am sure they will be a huge player in ecomm also dont forget they would be the largest bank in India.
I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that India being the world's largest democracy is not guaranteed to be a good thing given that only 33% of Indian citizens get through high school (and 8% graduate college). Many politicians are themselves uneducated, and it's easy to sway the opinions of the masses using religion and hatred as leverage.
Education is a bad indicator for the health of a democracy. Looks like the US isn't doing any better with democracy despite having higher education levels.
Can you tell me exactly what you mean by this? It's a different thing to compare public sentiment (which seems to be vastly different between the two countries), and it's different to compare standard of living and economical factors (which are again vastly different between the two countries). It seems like you are picking one and comparing it to the other, is that correct?
8% of 1.3 billion is ~110 million people. That is a sufficient to build great companies. Total population of Israel is 9 million and takes in funding of ~7 billion dollars and has been churning out great companies.
That was true of most of western europe a few decades ago too, and countries managed to stay democratic (and in a few cases, become democratic) while growing on all "good" metrics, I don't see why that wouldn't work in India.
Good point. Democracy works as its best when the masses are educated, otherwise it looks more like a dictatorship acting randomly.
I don't know about India as I haven't been there in years but that certainly rings true to me as I reached the same conclusion while staying in many other countries around the world.
You’re also assuming the education is adequate which is true some of the time but not others. I’ve been told there are people with Master’s degrees from Indian universities in Economics who don’t know any (statistical) programming language or even the theory being ordinary least squares. A Bachelor’s degree that doesn’t cover that is worthless.
You forgot that you are talking about a nation with more than a billion people. Providing everyone quality education is definitely going to be tough (the Education sector has actually seen many startups in recent years). What matters is that the education coverage should increase every here.
I dont think is that much easy, because it will be a different kind of game, in a different world, and maybe in the meantime what we understand of the industry (serial production of goods) can change a lot in the future.
First theres human behavior into play, and consumerism. We have been changing a lot of our daily habits through time, because we now live much more in the digital realm, making a lot of phisical things less valuable. We are sharing more, using less goods made of plastic, wood, steel. Our relation to nature and the climate change will force us to rethink the way we behave, our consumerism, what we use and how we use it. The demand will probably drop also because we are making less babies..
For instance automation, AI, Solar, batteries, and 3d printing can make it cheaper to produce things in your home.
And if we still have the same industry in the future, China has a lot of people, and with the industrial park they have now, even with salaries getting higher, it would be not easy even for India to take that spot. This people are insanelly productive already.
Also, if they reach the next level, which is pure automation, it doesnt matter how cheap and productive other humans will be, it will never be enough.
The only way to take the spot from China now will be a industrial paradigm shift, and i gave some examples of how this may happen.
Predicting the future is really hard, and is hardly as linear as we are inclined to think. (For instance what would be of US without WWI & WWII or without the Russian revolution of 1917? Both are 'black swan' events no one can predict that changes everything we know)
(Please, pardon me for any broken english i have in this text)
You can probably keep hoping. India has some incredible human capital in the form of the upper castes, but China also has a ton of human capital, plus a monoculture (the Han Chinese are the largest single ethnic group on the planet) that makes coordinating societal and economic change way easier. India is a mishmash of dozens of different ethnic groups that have been further factionalized by 1700 years of the caste system.
The ease of mono-cultural (Han Chinese) coordinated societal and economic change - are you referring to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution ? You are right, unquestioned fealty to a President for Life would never work in a diverse, multicultural country like India.
Another way of looking at things is that the advantage of social coordination that comes from a huge monoculture is strong enough to vastly outperform the fractured diversity of India despite the incredible unforced errors you mentioned.
One cannot cherry pick the economic growth in last 35-40 years of Chinese history, completely ignore the decades before that, and then proclaim the advantage of mono-culture.
The Cultural Revolution [1] "Millions of people were persecuted or suffered public humiliation, imprisonment, torture, hard labor, seizure of property, and sometimes execution or harassment into suicide. Many urban intellectual youths were sent to the countryside in the Down to the Countryside Movement. Red Guards destroyed historical relics and artifacts or ransacked cultural and religious sites. " [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
A single party system led by a dictator for life was the cause of the errors in the past and is the situation in the present. There is a problem with mono-culture.
It is? They utterly dominate in the US. Indian Americans have far and away the highest median household income of any ethnic group in the US (and it’s close to 2x that of white Americans). My understanding is that almost all Indian immigration to the US is from the upper castes.
When my Muslim grandfather was growing up in the 1930s in Gulbarga, he used to make a game of touching the water pot of his caste Hindu neighbors just to see them curse him out and have to re ritually purify it. Some of us I guess have to remind people that there isn’t a monopoly on migration.
Indians that came from Punjab in the early 1930s were not upper caste members. A large percentage of engineers that arrived in the US and Canada since the late 90s do not belong to upper castes.
Because his figures are as outdated as he is. You just joined the same bandwagon. ISRO launches rockets into space: Oh but the toilets and slums. News about a tech startup getting funding: Oh but the toilets and slums. We, in India, call you lot the toilet brigade who regurgitate stuff shown on your news channels instead of actually travelling to India. But I dare not ask you to travel to India as your favorite destination would either be the Taj Mahal or a visit to Mumbai's slums. It's as if the rest of India doesn't even exist. So it's best you stay out of India. Now when Indians downvote your ignorant and condescending comment don't get upset. You deserve it.
I think that comments like 'Fix the toilets first' when ISRO achieves a new milestone is careless because space research has serious defence implications. India is surrounded by multiple hostile and semi-hostile countries and should be able to deter certain actions from other countries. Only when people feel safe and secure can they start building and progressing.
However, I think comments like this only further darken the image of Indians to westerners. India is, on average, a very bad place to live. For example, India's state with highest HDI -Kerala ( where I am from )- is only comparable to certain Eastern European states.
And despite this positive news about startup funding, there has been massive capital flights from India in the recent years.
We have serious problems. Acknowledging them is the first step to solving them.
Look I'm not interested in portraying anything to Westerners. Whether it will darken India's image or not is not my worry. I'm here busting falsehood. If anyone tells me half a billion people shit on streets every single day I will call out such bullshit whether it darkens image or not. I'm fed up of hearing nonsense like this. If you aren't then good for you.
> India is, on average, a very bad place to live.
Not at all. I have been to many countries. The only difference is better infrastructure and waste management. Rest all is fluff (fashion, dining etc are all luxuries that are optional). I have never felt India is a "bad place" to live after all my travels. India is actually beautiful if you put some effort into exploring. The problem is that you are from Kerala and South Indians (especially keralities and tamilians) live in their own bubble. I'm a South Indian too before you get all worked up. We take too much pride in our States. Don't do that. Go explore North East. See how beautiful it is. Lest I forget the beautiful Himalayan range with all the hill stations that adore it. Or the region of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. There is so much to explore! Kerala is not the only state comparable to Eastern European countries. You have to travel to various States in India first before you make any such incorrect assumptions. Else there is no difference between you and the next foreigner you meet taking pictures with the poor in Mumbai's slums.
> We have serious problems. Acknowledging them is the first step to solving them.
We have and are doing it! What makes you think we aren't? If you are only looking at numbers then you are going to get all the wrong information. All these numbers and metrics are good for theoretical discussions but the moment you try to derive too much meaning into practical life you are just going to end up fooling yourself. Most of these numbers are extrapolated using methodologies all have accepted. Whether they are accurate or not is impossible to determine considering the population of India. I'm not deriding numbers calculated by these well established bodies. I'm questioning the sanity of those who blindly accept these numbers without checking anything on ground. When the sentiments on ground is exactly opposite to what numbers predict then something is wrong with the methodology adopted. Acknowledging that is the first step. Else you'll blindly accept the numbers and keep working on fixing something that maybe doesn't need fixing. There has to be some sort of balance between theoretical and practical aspects of things. And yes, many of these same bodies have accepted their procedures for calculating were incorrect and made revisions to their formulas from time to time. We are dealing with statistics here not science. Most of these metrics are extrapolated from sample data when complete data isn't available. And with population as diverse as that of India it is impossible to be accurate. Take numbers as a guidance not as absolute truth.
I am an American guy working in NY for an Indian company. I absolutely love it. All my colleagues are Indian and they are super nice. We never stress out about anything. Just hang out and do some work. Americans seem to be deeply biased about India. Lots of people think in hyperbole and generalizations. You don't know what something is like until you spend lots of time with it. Americans just hear headlines and assume they're rampantly true.
By this same logic, everyone in USA shoots guns and eats McDonalds daily.
What I am doing here is battling stereotypes. Nothing against Americans or anyone else here. It is the media that exaggerates stuff as they have to sell something. We just have to be wise enough to not believe everything shown on media. There is always more to it than that meets the eye.
> By this same logic, everyone in USA shoots guns and eats McDonalds daily.
Yes! This! When I read articles saying that half a billion people shit on streets every single day in India I question the sanity of the people who came up with these numbers as well as the sanity of those who believe such nonsense. Half a billion people shitting every single day, on the streets, is a whole lot of poop. I mean... whatever happened to common sense?
The media definitely has a giant effect, I agree. Maybe some Americans believe what they hear about more deeply than others. But all of us are talking about it, so clearly the media has to have at least some effect in structuring this biased conversation.
Funnily enough, the same media outlets who talk about shitting in the streets in India say the same thing about San Francisco, like, really often. It's a trope that must have been proven by some analytics platform to get a lot of clicks. So the content writers are instructed to juice this topic for all its worth. Craziness
This impression of India seems really strange to me. I've never been, but it's been 'top of my list' for years. I was completely baffled when I mentioned this to someone and the reply was 'oh but it's just poverty tourism' ... What? Why would I want to do that on any level, even short of any sort of self-aware embarrassment, what's the appeal? I can understand the Taj Mahal more, but your comment reminds me of it, tourists actually seek out slums to... what exactly, gawk at and photograph the poor?
It would be as bizarre and uncouth at home as I find the idea of it abroad.
I very much hope not to fit that mold when I eventually visit. I don't think I would - I would mainly just like to eat and cook! - but perhaps it's naïve to think I'd be any less annoying than the next gora.
It is exactly what it is. Poverty tourism. Tourists are deliberately taken to slums and poverty stricken places as that is what they wish to see. And no I don't blame the tourists alone. There is an entire industry that works around poverty tourism. There are tour guides in India who know exactly what the tourists are after and they lead them to the filthiest of places (some are deliberately kept that way) so they can take their photos and publish it on the net and the guide earns his buck. Only the lucky few tourists who manage to break out of the clutches of these pesky poverty tour guides get to experience "real India".
you chose a pressing problem which the country is trying to solve and used in a smear campaign to prove your view. I will throw another number to it : many European countries rank worse than India in per capita rape numbers. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/rape-statistics-b... . you might want to throw in the cultural hindrance to reporting rape but that is everywhere and increases count for every country.
Well I'm an Indian and I do have an Indian accent. Not sure why that is bad. It's just an accent. Not something to be ashamed of. And if you find it funny then hey at least you got a good laugh! I don't find it offensive :D
Ah, a typical ad hominem. It's not outdated. The numbers are still in favor of almost half of Indian's population not having access to a toilet. A simple Google search will learn that the program introduced by the government has mixed results and even though they are throwing massive amounts of money into the construction of said toilets, there is barely any reform going on in education or in the typical household where defecating in public is still considered normal. It will take a few generations to get to the roots of the cultural problem. I have been to India recently, New Delhi even, and more than once I was greeted with people defecating in public. Even outside the perimeters of the designated defecation streets.
Some of you are just unable to wrap your head around the fact that 5 numbers or 2 business trips don't make you an expert on the "cultural problems" of a country.
Somehow the startup ecosystem is doing just fine in SF even with all the drug addicts and people shitting on the street[1] over there. But the same problem is a dealbreaker for the startup ecosystem of India? Like do you really not see the problem with your reasoning here?
During my commute, I walk around one of the most expensive real estate in the world. I am frequently greeted by people shooting up drugs on that street. The govt has been throwing immense amount of money at the problem.
mass shooting threat is throughout the usa. don't throw in numbers to justify your points. average American does get affected by mass shooting, directly or indirectly
There are no "designated defecation streets". Stop bullshitting here. At least the poor in India aren't filled with the filth that some of you carry in your rotten minds.
Probably because most readers just tune out after the first sentence. Every HN article about the Indian space program or any other high-tech achievement is always accompanied by hand wringing about why a poor country is putting money into this instead of building toilets, curing polio, etc etc.
Yes we should freeze everyone's growth and maintain the status quo. Clearly only the Western nations deserve a high standard of living. The others need to make sacrifices for the greater good.
I might be wrong but just thinking out loud.
For example: PhonePe app - It's just a payment transfer app by Flipkart (although it is much better than GPay, in terms of usage speed) - its current valuation is around 7-8B+ USD. I don't get the much reason. There are no intermediary charges as PhonePe uses UPI Payment Interface (https://www.npci.org.in/product-overview/upi-product-overvie...)