If I see the difference between China and India, China has several branded equipment manufacturers and India right now does not have a single equipment company that has the same standing as Huawei.

I would like to see the Indian Telecom service providers like Reliance and Bharti embrace products developed by Indian companies.

Unless this essential relationship is established between the users and makers of complete technologically advanced Indian products, we, in India will continue to develop products or parts for other companies.

Subsidiary role is what the Western and most recently the Chinese companies are assigning to the brilliant and hard-working Indian engineers. Philips, Intel, IBM and even Huawei do not leave the product definition to the Indian subsidiaries. The controlling function is performed in the West or in China. Unless this cycle is broken, the real economic control in high technology will remain in the hands of those MNC companies.

Once Indian companies with Indian brands start selling to global customers, there will be positive changes that will lead to an ecosystem enabling differentiated innovative products.

In my opinion, this cycle of industrial subservience is already broken. Interestingly some of the Indian high-technology products have competed successfully against Huawei in China! India is a free economy. It is not the backing that is needed. However, if there is any reluctance of buying Indian products that reluctance should be put aside.

Indian entrepreneurs should become proponents of telling the service providers to evaluate the products developed by Indian companies rather than look for Huawei, Nortel or Lucent.

Indian enterprises are reluctant to buy Indian products. I do not know what the reasons are. They should shed subjective decision-making and embrace objectivity.

The most important lesson for the entire Indian economy is to be objective and open-minded toward products that do not have brand recognition from day one. That is the secret of United States’ success. Cisco was not a very well known brand. There were other brands like 3Com, Bridge, Ungerman-Bass that were more popular. Where have Ungermann-Bass and Bridge gone? Cisco today is a big name. When a new company like Cisco, whose name was unknown, emerged, their product was accepted because of the value it produced. That is the fundamental ingredient that allows entrepreneurs to succeed.

If there is a large pool of entrepreneurs of Indian origin in the United States, there is no question why entrepreneurs in India are missing. It is only when the end product is made in India that the product becomes an important economic engine with an independent vector. That is where the openness on part of the buyer will change the picture.

In the service provider and enterprise market, the value driven by a product is the primary ingredient they have to lower the bar and not just look at the Western brands. Once that is accomplished, India will have control over its destiny in high technology rather than offer a lower-cost environment for building subsidiaries of multinationals.