India, June 27 -- There is a long-standing debate playing out in public. Despite having a massive pool of engineering talent, India did not build global software product companies. That is why companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta are based in Silicon Valley and not Bengaluru. This undercurrent of anxiety is now taking a different shape: Why haven't Indians built the world's leading artificial intelligence models?

"Do you ask British Airways to make aircraft?" asks Harish Mehta, co-founder of NASSCOM, founder of Onward Technologies and author of 'The Maverick Effect.' "So, why do you ask services companies to make products? The DNA of a services company and a product company are entirely different, right from the CEO down to the juni...