A recent debate over India's progress in artificial intelligence has seen a startup founder come to the defense of the nation's established IT service giants. Vijay Thirumalai, founder of the AI-powered global mobility platform Goldwater, has publicly stated that blaming companies such as Infosys, TCS, and Zoho for India's perceived AI gap, particularly in developing a sovereign large language model (LLM), is "lazy" and "low IQ."
Defending India's IT Backbone
Thirumalai highlighted the profound impact of India's IT services industry, crediting it with significantly contributing to the creation of the country's middle class. He emphasized that these companies instilled confidence that Indian businesses could compete effectively on a global scale. "They sent millions of Indians abroad giving us valuable remittances, gave us the confidence that we can build world class service companies & whatever middle class we have is largely because of IT/ ITES companies, basically got us from 0-1," Thirumalai wrote in a social media post on Sunday, June 14, 2026.
He drew parallels with North America, noting that established technology and consulting firms like IBM, Accenture, or Deloitte are not typically criticized for failing to develop frontier AI technologies such as LLMs or generative AI models like ChatGPT.
The Core of the AI Debate
The intensifying discussion around India's AI strategy gained momentum after Anthropic, a leading AI company, suspended access to its advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. This suspension followed a directive from the US government citing national security authorities and export control regulations, affecting foreign nationals globally.
Thirumalai's comments also addressed a tendency he observed among some Indian commentators to criticize successful business leaders. "Forget having gratitude, Indian Intellectuals have this unique disease of berating leaders who have delivered - Come on guys we can do better," he added.
Criticism and Counterarguments
Author Rajiv Malhotra has been a vocal critic of figures like Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani and investor TV Mohandas Pai, accusing them of a "quick buck mentality" and prioritizing "renting Indian brains for building US intellectual property." Malhotra argued that this approach has hindered India's technological sovereignty.
However, Nilekani himself has previously suggested that India should focus on AI applications and use cases rather than attempting to build another foundational LLM from scratch, asserting that "the big boys" in Silicon Valley possess the billions needed for such development. This perspective underscores a strategic choice within the Indian tech community regarding where to best allocate resources in the global AI race.