Lets see. There is a funding gap here. Things that are rippoffs get funded easier. Most SV vc firms have an office in India and they are pattern matching for results. Also India still needs ELECTRICITY and INFRASTRUCTURE built. The opportunity is not to build the TWTR/FB for india but to build the AT&T,National Highway system, and basic amenities. There is a severe misunderstanding of which problems to solve vs which solutions will get me money which i will then use to solve my problems

I agree with this. You can build an amazing product for the Indian consumer, but if the people can't use it, what good is it?

> What would it take to build billion dollar product companies in India?

Block foreign companies (mostly Americans but in the near future Chinese), like China and Russia did. You have to protect local companies for them to grow. Technology takes time to mature.

I completely disagree with this.

I run a startup here in India. Practically speaking the main problems that we face are more administrative in nature. We spend almost 40-60 percent of our time sorting out issues from accounting, raising capital, convincing investors to back ideas here from India and most importantly educating them.

More protectionism will definately mean a lot more difficulty in convincing international investors from looking seriously at us since at the end of the day, they need to be able to take out money if the want to.

What we need desperately is a strong administrative and LEGAL framework to support business; This will really raise investor confidence both domestic and international. And overall give people the ability to compete at a global level.

Indians are brilliant and dont need handouts or protection.. All we need is an decent environment and we can take anyone on.

> convincing investors to back ideas here from India and most importantly educating them.

Why do you think someone is going to back your idea if a foreigner can operate overseas and get all your market? That is why you are spending 40-60 of your time doing it (and probably without success, like all but few startups).

You will not have investor confidence without a big success, like Yahoo or Alibaba. And you don't have a local big success if every company in Silicon Valley has an advantage over you. I'm from Brazil, so reality here is very similar with India.

Which tech products companies from those countries have global reach?

This isn't the OP question. But Alibaba & Telegram have global reach (not necessarily good examples, though, but remarkable technology growing outside the silicon valley).

If you only read the statement with the question mark, that's technically not there, but that would be missing the context of the rest of the post, in which OP says "I am curious why India does not have good product companies with global reach like TWTR, Slack, FB etc".

Telegram is a company made by Russians, but not a Russian company, and while it is made outside SV, it wasn't made in a place that blocked foreign companies, as you recommended, and which is what I disagree with.

But you agree that the Chinese companies are the only ones systematically capable of competing with the ones from Silicon Valley today, don't you? I don't have an argument against Chinese protectionism. It paid the price.

Also a billion dollar product for the indian customer looks nothing like a tech startup in the US. So enabling that to grow is key. This is a generational problem. Services and products are being built this generation to lay waste to that claim

I disagree with the OP. There are many companies in India who are doing a great job (especially in SaaS). Companies such as Zoho, Freshdesk and many such others are homegrown. They are doing great globally as well. The only reason you don't hear about them is because sub-standard Indian startup blogs are more interested in publishing click-bait articles about Flipkart, Ola, OyoRooms, Housing.com etc. And it's not their fault entirely. Tech-savvy Indians love reading such articles and that's how these blogs make money.

Brain drain is also a huge problem in india. Most of talented engineers go abroad mainly US. The mentality of indians is take a good job in US firm. In india their is very less research infrastructure and government polices does not support local market like china so many young indians seek to take job.

That is reason there are many Indians at top positions in US companies.

I think this is the biggest problem. US just has better opportunities.

It's really hard to gain traction remotely so you need to be able expand your markets by sending folks over establishing beach-heads in new territories. Going from US to India is a visa on arrival. Going to the US (or pretty much any place with money) from India is a ordeal and a gamble.

It may well be that the IT services industry you mention is taking all the talent. Apparently, the Indian ecosystem tech is currently structured such that this is the most rewarding career path.