There’s a growing buzz in the technology and chatterati circles these days that feels both familiar and new. Familiar in its patriotic fervour, and new in its ambition and scope. Digital sovereignty has become the latest buzzword, gathering momentum as domestic firms have started taking steps towards building their own large language models, cloud infrastructure, data centres, and even indigenous email and messaging platforms. The conversation has gained currency with Zoho’s stunning rise as the flag-bearer of self-reliant technology. Its messaging app, Arattai, has stormed the charts, drawing endorsements from Cabinet ministers and igniting a sense that the long-elusive dream of an Indian-built digital ecosystem might finally be within reach.
What makes all this interesting is the blend of policy, pride, and pragmatism. A few years ago, the idea of building an indigenous alternative to WhatsApp or a foundational artificial intelligence (AI) model seemed fanciful. Now, companies like Zoho and a clutch of AI start-ups are trying to do just that, which is to move beyond being service providers to becoming product creators. The government’s IndiaAI mission, with its Rs 10,000-crore investment in compute infrastructure, reflects the same aspiration that we should not merely consume technology but also create it.
The excitement, however, has also led to some loose understanding of terms like digital sovereignty and swadeshi. At the recent FE Best Banks Awards, when Home Minister Amit Shah was asked what swadeshi means, he replied that any product built with the sweat of Indian labour qualifies as indigenous. The statement was telling because it recognised that in an interconnected global economy, building in India for the world is as swadeshi as building in India for India. It is a vision of self-reliance that embraces global participation rather than shunning it.
And yet, much of the current chatter seems to miss that nuance. The celebration of products like Arattai is well-deserved, but it must not morph into a call for digital isolation. True technological sovereignty does not come from closing off global products; rather it comes from creating ones that can stand beside them, and compete with them, on equal terms. The world has seen such enthusiasm before, from Hike Messenger to Koo, where early bursts of nationalism translated into downloads but not lasting engagement.
Zoho’s Arattai feels different, not least because of the company’s long track record of patient product-building. Its back-end infrastructure has been built painstakingly over years rather than assembled in haste.
But it’s scale that separates global platforms from local experiments. WhatsApp, for example, became indispensable not just because it offered free messaging but because it built an entire ecosystem around payments, small business communication, and media sharing. Similarly, Google and Apple became global giants not because they were American, but because they solved universal problems elegantly and consistently. Their success was built on usability and reach, not on the nationality of their founders. For domestic firms aspiring to digital sovereignty, the real test is whether they can build for the world.
This same dilemma shadows our AI ambitions. Inspired by China’s DeepSeek, which developed a powerful foundational AI model at a fraction of Western costs, the government launched its own AI mission to create indigenous large language models. The intent is to ensure that we also have a seat at the global AI table. But the bigger challenge is not technical but economic. Unlike China, which shields its domestic market, India is an open economy where foreign products dominate. Any Indian-built foundational model must therefore compete not just with OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini, but also with China’s DeepSeek, and it must do so in a market that prizes performance and affordability over origin.
That competitive reality has already humbled many domestic tech efforts. The indigenous 4G telecom stack, developed by Tata Consultancy Services and Tejas Networks, has so far found no takers beyond BSNL. It is here that the notion of digital sovereignty meets its limitation. Sovereignty in the digital age is not about exclusion but about capability and influence. A nation becomes digitally sovereign not by walling itself off from global technology but by contributing to it, by creating platforms and products that others adopt and depend on.
This is not to dismiss the importance of indigenous effort. On the contrary, the push for home-grown models, data centres, and cloud infrastructure is vital. It builds capacity, sharpens skills, and lays the foundation for the next wave of innovation. But these must be stepping stones toward global competitiveness, not ends in themselves. Boycotts and bans may create temporary surges, but they cannot substitute sustained excellence.
Zoho’s journey is instructive precisely because it has always looked outward while remaining rooted in India. It builds its technology stack in-house, but also earns its revenue globally.
Therefore, the road ahead will demand more than patriotic zeal. It will require domestic firms to think beyond replication, to innovate, differentiate, and globalise. Only then can digital sovereignty move from being a political slogan to an economic reality. The day the country’s digital products are adopted not out of sentiment but out of choice will mark the arrival of true technological independence.