In a LinkedIn post, Shankar claimed that India’s richest elite have become overly conservative in their approach to capital allocation, describing them as “the single largest self-inflicted obstacle” to the nation’s innovation-driven future. He said India does not suffer from a shortage of money, but from a reluctance to deploy it toward high-risk, high-return ventures.
According to Shankar, India’s wealthiest one percent hold nearly 60 percent of their total assets in real estate and gold. He described this accumulation as “sediment,” characterizing it as capital that has effectively stopped circulating within the productive economy and instead remains locked in static physical holdings.
He further noted that while India’s startup ecosystem is producing companies in defence technology, aerospace, climate technology, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence, the majority of funding continues to come from foreign investors rather than domestic sources.
Shankar also highlighted structural gaps in research and development spending, stating that India allocates only 0.65 percent of its gross domestic product to research and development. He contrasted this with China at 2.65 percent, the United States at 3.45 percent, and Israel exceeding 6 percent.
Extending his critique to corporate India, Shankar said the country’s top ten non-financial companies collectively invest only 2 percent of their profits in research and development. He compared this with firms in the United States, China, Japan, and Germany, which reportedly invest between 29 percent and 55 percent of profits in innovation-related activities.
He also asserted that major Indian banking and financial services companies listed in the Nifty 50 allocate zero funds to research and development, stating, “Not a token amount. Zero.”
Shankar argued that while global technology leaders such as NVIDIA, Alphabet, Microsoft, Samsung, and Volkswagen are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, semiconductors, autonomous systems, and advanced manufacturing, Indian corporations continue to treat research and development as a cost to be minimized rather than a strategic investment.
He warned that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and autonomous systems would not wait for Indian industry to catch up, emphasizing that technological disruption is indifferent to domestic market size.
In his post, Shankar also criticized India’s expanding mutual fund and systematic investment plan culture. He said the growth of retail investing has created a generation focused on earning returns from existing market structures rather than financing disruptive innovation. He added, “What the systematic investment plan boom has created is a nation of people who have learned to make money from money through the existing structures of the past, not the disruptive technologies of the future.”
Drawing a historical parallel, Shankar compared venture capital behavior to the East India Company era. He said that in 1600, English merchants pooled capital into high-risk maritime ventures targeting unknown markets without guarantees of success or return. He noted, “The English did not build an empire by buying gold and putting it under the bed. They built it by funding expeditions into the unknown.”
He contrasted this with what he described as India’s current investment mindset, stating that descendants of the colonized have adopted an overly cautious and defensive relationship with capital, prioritizing real estate accumulation over backing emerging entrepreneurs.
Shankar concluded by linking the issue to India’s long-term development goals, particularly the vision of a developed nation by 2047. He argued that the absence of domestic risk capital undermines ambitions for technological sovereignty and global innovation leadership, stating, “You cannot become a developed nation by not taking risk. History has no examples of it.”
The remarks underscore a broader debate over whether India’s economic rise will be powered by domestic risk capital or continue to depend heavily on foreign investment in frontier technologies.
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