Ongoing tariff war has taught us Indians a lot about international trade - or so we think. Many tech workers may be affected by whatever is cooking in the western atmosphere. In this high ground, India has a new tech arrow - Swadeshi Software.
We have long depended on software developed in the western world. And for a good reason. Software developed in India aren't all that common. It has also not been a matter of importance for most of us. If I want a software that lets me compile my ultra memory safe Rust code into a static binary, debating the country of origin of this said compiler is not even on the list of my considerations.
However, this new consideration is being ingrained via moral suasion. A consideration for buying Indian goods isn't a twenty first century invention. As far as my personal knowledge dates, this was the major theme of the INC Session of 1906, where they adopted resolutions on Swadeshi and boycott of British goods. Bringing this consideration into the realm of software is indeed a recent brew up.
The latest to enter this fora is Zoho. Its sudden call to fame largely orchestrated by our honorable minister of electronics and information technology - Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw. He posted a video on his official Twitter account, highlighting how he is switching to Zoho for the usual 'office' apps. In a subsequent presentation, he started off by mentioning how the slides were created using Zoho.
This is a good step. Despite potential complains of favoritism, this act strengthens public belief that the government shall come forward to support tangible endeavours for developing software products in India. However, the question is larger - will such software stand the test of time?
Indian companies wanting to ride this wave of Swadeshi love need to keep in mind that expectations will be high. Humans have a special space for familiarity, no matter how parasitic it may be. One unresolved complain from a Swadeshi app and users will happily switch back to the usual Microsoft ecosytem.
Companies also must ensure that being Swadeshi isn't their only USP. There's ample examples of products which failed due to lack of innovation. Users won't buy the swadeshi dig for long. The question of innovation cannot be swept under the rug of Swadeshi. We don't want blank clones of existing applications. We need innovative software that present a competition to globally accepted software companies.
The UPI ecosystem is a prime example of what good software should feel like. Another popular software, common among web developers, Postman has its origin in India.
Government must also do its part in ensuring the economic ecosystem provides a smooth launch to software startups. Easing paperwork burden and compliance will go a long way.
This will happen only if the foundations are strengthened. Let universities accept innovative software as valid replacement for certain courses. Award successful people with preferential access to contracts for initial time.
Finally, Indian software growth should not be limited to companies selling Indian software. It should spill out to Indians making good software. There's a sharp difference. End of day, we want to produce "good software" not just "Indian software". A good user experience and necessary features are must even if your average user may not notice. Companies need to step ahead from features and address concerns of privacy, data harvesting, advertisement targetting etc. If these are not addressed, Indian software could very well end up being just an Indian data sink.
As an example, Arattai chat application by Zoho currently doesn't support end to end encryption for texts by default. One must select "secret chat" feature to enable that. In 2025, I would expect a chat application to have E2EE as a basic feature.
Self hosting culture is also nascent in India. There is a lack of applications that are developed for decentralized or federated usage. The very reason why Zoho email managed to be successful is because the email network is federated by design. Thats why I can use hi@snehit.dev as my email account and you can bring in your own server too. While companies want to hop onto interoperability bandwagon, they are reluctant to make their own products interoperable - again for an understandable reason. This however, isn't always a good option for users, especially the tech savvy ones, who look for technical specifications rather than the country of origin. Driving Indians to create not just Indian software, but good software will reap dividends.
Going back to my initial statement - that I won't necessarily look for swadeshi compiler when compiling my Rust code - its necessary to understand (for the common man) that software isn't built from soil and metal. It is built incrementally, re-using vast amount of code written by people from diverse backgrounds. This holds especially true for open source software. Modern software which relies on re-using code via libraries / modules / packages / (whatever) are a melting pot of code that has been through many hands. If you think a piece of software is made in country X (insert any country) then you're mistaken.
What we can call Indian is the business and economical aspect. We would love to make money in India AND be able to utilize that money to afford a better lifestyle. If that means making software in India, then absolutely. Alas, we don't have that ecosystem yet. People are busy navigating through regulatory hoops, doing the bare minimum and getting by with white labelling.
Foundational research and development will need pumping money. Nobody is ready for that discussion yet. We won't build the next kernel or operating system in India without that. (We do have BOSS Linux, but its a Debian spin; not exactly Swadeshi in my terminology)
While policy is important in this journey, there's a need to acknowledge that the success of western software giants is in a good part also attributed to the technical minds (lot of which are Indian immigrants). Things made in India will follow when its viable to do so and sufficiently rewards the right people.