Nand Kumar Nair

the impact ai summit in delhi was a perfect demonstration of why india keeps losing in tech and i’m tired of pretending it wasn’t a disaster. let me paint the actual picture: > cash-only payments at a “digital india” upi ?? > pm visit → main hall cleared for hours, everyone else just stood around doing nothing > exhibitors locked out of their own stalls > 3-hour queue just to enter > a founder’s product got stolen during the summit > no wifi at an ai event. > can’t take your keys if you came via car/bike > no laptop/camera at tech event > people were asked to sit on the ground > speaker lineup with consultants/bureaucrats who’ve never shipped a real product > the registration system crashed multiple times. people who registered weeks in advance couldn’t get in. vips walked past massive queues while founders and builders stood outside in the heat. 🤡 and 27 countries witnessed all of this live networking areas? no space to stand. many demos didn’t work because there was no stable internet. 5g?? this is what happens when optics matter more than execution. when innovation becomes photo-op the sad part is india has insane talent. founders building world class products. engineers and researchers doing real work. leave India for a sec, im at network school and the youngest crowd is all Indians. but we keep shooting ourselves in the foot with performative nonsense. the west isn’t winning because they’re smarter. they’re winning because they care about details. because they respect builders. because their tech summits actually work. same story when @sama came to india last time. boomer uncles asked the dumbest questions. and when he said it’s hard for india to build foundational models, we took it on our ego. rn, every founder who attended left embarrassed. imagine international delegate left with stories about our “infrastructure.” many friends and young builder lost a little more faith. this wasn’t just bad planning. it was a signal of what we value. and clearly, it’s security theater and photo-ops over builders. we can do better. we have the talent. we have the market. we have the potential. what we don’t have is execution and respect for the people building the future. maybe one day we will do better. till then if you’re a founder, ignore the noise. keep building.