Amid the ongoing rivalry between OpenAI and Chinese AI DeepSeek, desis are wondering where India stands. With a minnow like Ola’s Krutrim, the nation doesn’t yet qualify even as a backbencher. While there a re big promises by jingoistic industrialists, facts remain unchanged: We have a long way to go. In the words of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, it’s quite hopeless for India to build an LLM from scratch the way ChatGPT was modeled. While the techpreneur has been slandered left right and center in India, the joke is still on is. Speaking about the Chinese dominance, Zerodha CEO remarked,

Say what you will about the differences in our worldviews and economic models, but their scientific and technological progress is undeniable across disciplines—DeepSeek is just the latest example.”

In an elaborate thread, Nithin Kamath remarked on how the Chinese are way ahead of India with several decades invested in R&D. Even as the government is hopeful that India can develop its own AI within 8-10 months, India needs a fundamental pivot into R&D and not just invest on hardware or copying the west.

For example, you can’t just buy GPUs and expect Indians to create groundbreaking AI applications. Without the right talent and an enabling ecosystem that facilitates innovation, all the GPUs in the world will be pointless.”

In the case of China, it was 2 decades at the bare minimum focusing just on research. If we start focusing on building our research and scientific capabilities, we will hopefully see results in 5 to 10 years.

In the 1960s-1970s, India and China had roughly the same per capita GDP. They started their reforms in the 1980s, and by 1990, they had overtaken our per capita GDP. Say what you will about the differences in our worldviews and economic models, but their scientific and… pic.twitter.com/SSddVpEoOB— Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) January 29, 2025

DeepSeek has created quite a dent in the AI industry, with billions wiped out of Nvidia stocks, causing panic and paranoia. Meanwhile, OpenAI has accused DeepSeek of stealing its data to train its AI model.

See Also: All The Buzz On Artificial Intelligence