Building Self-Reliant India: How Indian Startups Are Paving Way To Technological Independence

Many Indian startups have created small and medium businesses that rely heavily on last-mile delivery and middle-mile delivery for the transport of their goods and services. 

The setting up of India's first lithium-ion cell manufacturing facility and building batteries that charge rapidly without experiencing degradation in high temperatures have been instrumental in bringing out India-made technology.

Source : andreas160578/Pixabay

By Pankaj Sharma

Technology independence is the heart of making India self-reliant let's dive deep into what we mean by independence. Independence means that you are free to do what you want to do and how you want to do it. In 1947 India attained full independence. We wrote our own constitution to create freedom for our citizens to create a life of their choice ranging from the freedom to practice their religion, to pursuing the education of their choice and freedom to build businesses and careers as they liked.

When we try and contextualise this narrative from a technology perspective. We have to recognise that as a country we have been chasing another kind of freedom which is the freedom from technological dependency on other countries. India is a dream destination for global technological companies. It provides a really big market and talent pool of engineers and scientists that have been at the centre of technology creation for most of the global tech giants.

However, over the last decade, we have seen the creation of a startup ecosystem in India. More and more tech companies are germinating building technology in India for India. One such sector that has massive growth opportunities is the revolution around electric vehicles and renewable energy.

Batteries Powering Change

Batteries for electric vehicles and stationary storage batteries for renewable energy are at the heart of this domestic transition. India is gearing itself for domestic production of lithium-ion cells and battery technology made in India for Indian climatic conditions. Most batteries and lithium-ion cells have been designed for European and US markets. 

In these markets, the temperature profile and the operating conditions of such batteries are very different from the Indian climatic conditions and drive cycles. The government has played an active role in jump-starting this sector and many startups such as log 9 have responded to this opportunity to make India self-reliant.

The setting up of India's first lithium-ion cell manufacturing facility and building batteries that charge rapidly without experiencing degradation in high temperatures have been instrumental in bringing out India-made technology. Multiple other such startups are actively working in embedded engineering software engineering thermal management systems and material fabrication which will all come together to reduce India’s dependency on imported technologies as far as electric vehicles and renewable energies are concerned.

Last Mile Resort

Many Indian startups have created small and medium businesses that rely heavily on last-mile delivery and middle-mile delivery for the transport of their goods and services. 

Moreover, by Indigenous development of data analytics telematic services empowering the gig economy workers while Indian and Indian startups are building domestic solutions and technologies, we are seeing massive adoption of Indian-made products and Indian-made technologies that are reducing India’s dependency on the import of technology and this is the first step towards achieving India's independence from global tech giants dependencies. 

With the third largest number of unicorns in the world, India is poised for massive growth in its start-up ecosystem and locally built technologies which are more suited for India and Indian customers. 

We foresee that within the next 10 years, the Indian startup ecosystem will be at the forefront of giving the technology layer and technology independence that India has been longing for over the last 75 years.

(The author is the Co-Founder & Director at Log9 Materials)

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