Mumbai: When a market bets so fiercely on a single company that its IPO is oversubscribed seventy-five hundred times, it’s not just numbers—it’s a signal. That’s the tremor rippling through Hong Kong this autumn, as Deepexi Technology, China’s answer to Palantir, ignited a frenzy that didn’t just move stock tickers. It asked a question that echoes now in New Delhi’s power corridors: “If China is betting on data as strategic infrastructure, why isn’t India?” The timing is not accidental. India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, navigates a security landscape where snow lines the Line of Actual Control and cyber threats slither through digital borders like shadowy predators. It has landed rovers on the moon, built a payments system for billions, yet finds itself adrift in a critical arena: sovereign data fusion—the ability to turn fragmented information into actionable intelligence, fast. This is not a gap of technology alone; it is a gap of vision. And in an era where software defines war and peace, that gap could become a chasm.
THE GHOST OF GOTHAM: HOW PALANTIR REDEFINED ‘CONNECTING THE DOTS’
Peter Thiel’s question after 9/11 was less about code than about human fallibility: “Could we see the threads before they strangled us?” The answer was Gotham, a platform that didn’t just store data—it wove it into a living tapestry. Financial records from Karachi, satellite imagery of desert roads, social media posts in Kabul—all stitched together so analysts could ask, “Show me every truck carrying explosives north of Kandahar this week” and get a map back in seconds. It worked. In Iraq, it predicted 80% of roadside bomb attacks; in Afghanistan, it tracked insurgent supply lines through the chaos of mountain passes. The Pentagon didn’t just “buy” Palantir—it “depended” on it. Today, Palantir is a $477 billion behemoth, its AI Platform embedding large language models into classified workflows (think ChatGPT trained on enemy troop movements). Poland’s defence minister put it bluntly last month: “If there’s wisdom in battlefield data, Palantir has it.” But what makes Palantir revolutionary isn’t just its software—it’s its “philosophy”. Where legacy defence firms move at the speed of glaciers, Palantir iterates weekly. A bug fixed in Silicon Valley reaches a CIA analyst in Kabul by bedtime. This is not technology for bureaucrats; it is technology for “survival.”
INDIA’S DILEMMA: THE DATA WE HAVE, AND THE PLATFORM WE LACK
Reddit threads buzz with frustration: “Why can’t India just buy Palantir?” The answer is written in the subtext of “sovereignty.” No nation hands its most sensitive intelligence to foreign code—especially not one where adversaries range from cyber gangs to nuclear-armed neighbours. But the bigger barrier is inertia. India’s defence ecosystem, still rooted in Cold War procurement, treats software like an afterthought, not a strategic asset. We build fighter jets with pride, yet when it comes to fusing data from drones, radar, and civilian sensors, we’re stuck with patchwork systems that might as well be typewriters next to quantum computers. Yet India “has” the ingredients. It graduates more software engineers than any country except China—minds sharp enough to crack blockchain, curious enough to question why TikTok works better than our own apps. Indian firms dominate enterprise integration; TCS and Infosys could build a Palantir-like backbone tomorrow if given the chance. Digital India didn’t just create Aadhaar and UPI—it built data lakes: vast, shimmering reservoirs of tax records, farm yields, even hospital wait times. What’s missing? The “narrative”—the belief that data fusion isn’t a “nice-to-have,” but a lifeline.
CHINA’S LESSON: WHEN STATE AND MARKET DANCE AS ONE
Beijing understood this decades ago. Its 2015 “civil-military fusion” doctrine wasn’t a policy—it was an evolutionary leap. It didn’t force startups to serve the military; it “wove” them into the fabric of state strategy. The result? Firms like Deepexi, which combines AI with supply-chain analytics to outthink Western competitors; TRS, which turns government data into intelligence faster than any American rival; DeepSeek, which trains hundred-billion-parameter models on domestic chips to bypass Silicon Valley’s export controls. These aren’t “Palantir clones”—they’re “descendants”, adapted to a soil where state ambition and market greed grow as one. Deepexi’s 55% revenue growth (vs. Palantir’s 30%) isn’t just a numbers win. It’s a statement: “We don’t wait for the West to innovate—we build what we need.” India watches this, and sometimes wonders: “Could we be so bold?”
BEYOND WAR: DATA AS THE NEW OIL (AND WHY INDIA NEEDS ITS OWN SPIGOT)
Palantir’s magic isn’t just military. Its Foundry platform powers Britain’s COVID vaccine distribution, Ukraine’s refugee resettlement, even Boeing’s factory automation—cutting waste by 30% across 12 global sites. These “dual-use” tools are force multipliers: they make a nation “smarter,” not just stronger. China’s AI-Plus plan aims for 70% AI penetration in key sectors by 2027; India’s comparable efforts are still scattered, like seeds thrown to the wind. A national data-fusion platform could anchor this—turning chaos into order, and order into competitiveness. Think of UPI. It wasn’t built by a multinational; it was stitched from government vision and startup grit, proving that India can solve “impossible” problems when it cares enough. Aadhaar, for all its flaws, showed us how to build planet-scale infrastructure with our own hands. Why not data fusion?
CRITICS ARE WRONG: INDIA DOESN’T NEED 20 YEARS, IT NEEDS COURAGE
Sceptics will sneer: “Palantir took two decades and billions in VC. India can’t compete.” But UPI didn’t take two decades—it took five years of bureaucratic grit and tech humility. Aadhaar took a decade, not a century. The technology stack is already here: cloud computing, open-source machine learning, even the data lakes we’ve already built. We don’t need to invent fire; we need to learn how to forge swords from it—swords sharp enough for India’s edges. And let’s be honest: The geopolitical winds are not gentle. Beijing’s January 2025 export controls on Palantir and Anduril aren’t just trade moves—they’re a warning. Washington’s semiconductor bans push China to innovate faster, to optimize AI for chips that don’t need American approval. India stands at a fork: Wait for the storm, or build an ark?
POLAND’S EXAMPLE: WHY ‘URGENCY’ AND ‘INDIGENIZATION’ CAN WALK HAND IN HAND
Poland doesn’t wait for perfect solutions. Facing Russia on NATO’s eastern flank, it spends 5% of GDP on defence—“and” partners with Palantir while pouring money into local firms like WB Electronics. Why? Because in war, time isn’t a luxury. India’s defence budget is $75 billion and growing. Why not use that muscle to walk both paths: engage the proven (Palantir, Anduril) while nurturing the indigenous (startups like Persistent Systems, which already build defence software)? This isn’t about autarky—it’s about “agency”. When a crisis hits—when cyber attackers take down our power grids, or a border dispute escalates—we don’t want to beg for software updates. We want to hit “refresh” with our own hands.
THE QUESTION INDIA MUST ASK ITSELF
India’s story is not one of lack—it’s of latent power. We landed Chandrayaan-3 when others said the moon’s south pole was impossible. We built UPI when sceptics called it a pipe dream. A Palantir-like platform isn’t a fantasy—it’s the next chapter. But here’s the truth: Building it won’t be easy. It will require politicians who see software as strategic, not just techy. It will need bureaucrats who move faster than a startup in Bengaluru. It will demand that we stop treating “indigenization” as a buzzword and start treating it as a survival instinct. Deepexi’s IPO wasn’t just about one company. It was a mirror held up to the world: “Data is the new oil, and whoever controls the refineries wins.” India has the oil—we just need to build our own refinery. The question isn’t whether we can. It’s whether we have the courage to try. Because when the next crisis comes—when the lines blur between civilian and military, between data and death—we won’t just need a platform. We’ll need to know we built it “ourselves”. That’s the revolution India needs. Not with guns, but with code. Not with anger, but with purpose. Because in the end, sovereignty isn’t just a flag—it’s the right to see the world clearly, even when everyone else is looking away.
Brijesh Singh is a senior IPS officer and an author (@brijeshbsingh on X). His latest book on ancient India, “The Cloud Chariot” (Penguin) is out on stands. Views are personal.
