The 17th edition of TechSparks opened in Bengaluru with a clear message for India's tech ecosystem: prosperity cannot be imported, and the country must learn to build and own the technologies that solve its own problems.
YourStory's flagship startup-tech summit, themed 'The New Tech Order', brought together founders, investors, policymakers and technologists to examine how India can move from providing technology services to owning foundational technology.
Vembu: Own the foundation before chasing AI
Setting the tone in his inaugural keynote, Zoho Co-founder and Chief Scientist Sridhar Vembu argued that India should prioritise infrastructure and foundational technologies over heavy spending on graphics processing units (GPUs).
"If I earn $10 billion right now, as a government, I will spend the money on Bangalore infrastructure, Chennai infrastructure, all that. There's no point spending $10 billion on GPUs right now," he said.
Vembu said the real obstacle to national prosperity is not the loss of outsourcing jobs but a lack of technology ownership. He claimed that India does 40–50% of Nvidia's chip design work and a large share of software development for Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco, but the financial returns flow to foreign IP holders.
"Ultimately, who has ownership of the technology determines what is the income level of the non-tech people in that economy," he said.
He also predicted major disruption to traditional coding, likening software to a handloom industry about to meet machine looms. By his estimate, AI already writes better code than 60–70% of software engineers and could outperform 90% within three to six months. Rather than lay off staff, he said, Zoho is redeploying engineers to deeptech hardware, including building server infrastructure in-house.
Vembu urged India to follow the path of East Asian economies, building foundational layers first, as China did with Baidu and WeChat. "As much as we think of China as adversaries, I actually look to them as gurus," he said.
Tech30 2026 unveiled
Day 1 also saw Vembu unveil Tech30 2026, YourStory's annual selection of 30 promising startups building India's next generation of technology. He was joined on stage by Yoonmin Cho, APJ Lead, Snowflake for Startups, and Amar Dixit, CEO, WOI India.
Chosen by a jury of ecosystem leaders along with YourStory's senior editorial and research teams, this year's cohort spans spacetech, defence, clean energy, advanced materials, agritech and healthcare. It includes counter-drone maker Apollyon Dynamics, NavIC chip developer MumbaiSemi, quantum-safe encryption startup Pramatra Space, laser-weeding robot maker Harvested Robotics, and Dognosis, which is developing a breath-based cancer screening test.
Kharge: Taking investment to where talent lives
Priyank Kharge, Minister for Home Affairs, IT, Biotechnology and E-Governance, Government of Karnataka, outlined the state's strategy to ease pressure on Bengaluru by bringing investment to where talent already exists.
In a fireside chat with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma, Kharge said the Beyond Bengaluru Mission is showing results, with Mysuru delivering close to Rs 4,000 crore in IT exports, Mangaluru close to Rs 3,500 crore, and the Hubballi-Belagavi-Dharwad cluster close to Rs 3,000 crore.
He pointed to recent deals as proof of the policy's reach, including NTT's acquisition of two Udupi-based startups and acquisitions of semiconductor design companies in Belagavi and Mangaluru, some led by founders aged just 23 or 24. The state is also setting up region-specific centres of excellence, including AI centres at IIIT Dharwad and IIIT Raichur, an agritech centre in Kalaburagi and a horticulture centre in Bagalkot.
Spacetech: Building through rejection and failure
The day also turned the spotlight on the gritty reality of building India's private space sector. In conversation with Shradha Sharma, AgniKul Cosmos Co-founder and CEO Srinath Ravichandran and GalaxEye Co-founder and CEO Suyash Singh spoke about surviving hundreds of investor rejections—275 for AgniKul and around 100 for GalaxEye.
Ravichandran explained AgniKul's frugal pay-per-kilogram model, aiming for commercial viability at the $50–60 million mark. "It is more like you give me $500 million and then I will start giving you money back. That is not how India works," he said.
Singh recounted losing communication with GalaxEye's satellite just 30 days after launch, but said such setbacks are part of building the industry. He added that defence is one of the largest markets for space-based Earth observation. "Geopolitics is hotter, and space based surveillance is not an option. It is mandatory," he said.
Both founders flagged the scarcity of growth-stage capital and supply chain hurdles, but remained optimistic that ESOPs and stricter Western visa rules are drawing top engineering talent back to India's deeptech ecosystem.