Will India give the world a technology titan like America’s Google, Facebook and Amazon or China’s Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent? With all the smart, entrepreneurial talent available — very often the same talent the rest of the world relies on to imagine and nurture its own tech companies — it is reasonable to ask what is taking us so long.

The first wave of technology development in India gained momentum in the 1990s, with companies such as the one I co-founded, Infosys, riding a tide of global outsourcing and consulting. India’s export revenues in information technology and IT-enabled services grew from less than half a billion to $40.4bn, between 1994 and 2008. A growing number of multinational enterprises were turning to technology to solve their toughest problems. High bandwidth fibre-optic connectivity, the momentum of globalisation, and the quality of talent in India, were making it easier for them to find the answers.

From the mid 2000s, the second wave of tech companies began. The rise of mobile internet, the cloud, and the ubiquity of smartphones and big data were unstoppable. What differentiated these start-ups was their acute focus on addressing the aspirations of consumers in the domestic market. Along came Flipkart, a leader in ecommerce, subsequently acquired by Walmart; Ola, a worthy ride-hailing competitor to Uber; Paytm, which pioneered payments; Swiggy for food delivery; and Oyo, a new world hotel chain.