This Week On Bullish: Is India The Next Tech Superpower?

Hello friends, and welcome back to Bullish, TechCrunch’s first talk show, and continuing effort to ensure that I am on a first-name basis with my dry cleaner.

This week we dug into a topic of large scale — large human scale, that is. India has 1.25 billion citizens, and hundreds of millions of cellphone subscriptions, making it not only the second-largest mobile market, but a potential prize for companies that can properly address it.

India has a massive mobile market, and hundreds of millions of citizens under the age of 14. Call it the Snapchat demographic.

The question is who will win? The Indian startup scene has produced blockbuster hits, like Flipkart, but that doesn’t mean that companies born in other countries won’t try and pick up market share. To help us understand the dynamics of the situation, we brought Mohit Aron into the studio for quick chat.

Given that Aron holds degrees from both India and the United States, and is the co-founder and CEO of technology shop Cohesity, he has the proper perspective.

If you read English technology media, you can’t not note a large, and continuing focus on the comings and goings in Silicon Valley. It makes some sense, as the region is a key driver of the global technology industry. But that doesn’t mean that what is outside of my time zone doesn’t matter.

Recently, Indian Prime Minister Modi came to Silicon Valley to a rock-star welcome. The decision to visit wasn’t an accident, and that Modi met with Mark Zuckerberg was on purpose.

So, what’s next for India’s technology scene, and are American companies properly addressing its market? Let’s find out.