Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia on Wednesday said 90% of Indian innovations are “copycat ideas” and the country is unprepared for the shift to the creator economy which beckons all of us now. Bhatia, who launched worlds first web-based email Hotmail which he later sold to Microsoft, said pursuing initiatives like Make in India which lay a thrust on local manufacturing is also of no use as modern factories like that of Tesla employ only 300-400 people in a plant.
The future is not the manufacturing economy which China has successfully exploited to its advantage, but the creator economy, Bhatia said, adding that India is unprepared for the same.
Speaking at the annual Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum here, Bhatia said what India needs at present is decentralized decision-making where problems are spotted independently and ideas to deal with them evolve.
Describing products like Airbnb, Tesla and Uber as true innovations to come out of Silicon Valley in the US, Bhatia said such products could come up because people were spotting their own problems and trying to solve them.
“90 per cent of the innovation industry is copycat in India, there is nothing new they do,” he said, adding culturally, innovation can come from allowing our children to ask basic questions. However, the education system is focused on allotting marks, graduating and helping in landing a job, he rued.
“As a country, we are still living in the past and not looking at the future,” he said, pointing out that there is a dearth of ideas.
