Over the past few months, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole that started as a casual curiosity: what does India’s rapidly growing middle class mean for the next wave of product and company building? I’m not a founder or investor, just a software person with a soft spot for economic history and systems thinking. This post is mostly me thinking out loud, trying to make sense of some ideas that keep popping up.
The Setup
India’s middle class is expected to more than double by 2030, hitting over 700 million people. That’s not just a trend, that’s a seismic shift. For context, that’s close to the number of people in the US and EU combined. Wild, right?
What really grabs me is how different this feels from China’s path in the early 2000s. This isn’t a manufacturing-led, export-first story. It’s digital, mobile, and mostly services-driven. UPI, India’s payment system, is now handling over 10 billion transactions a month. Most people coming online are skipping desktops entirely and jumping straight to smartphones.
What I’m Watching
1. AI in the Wild (and Not Where You’d Expect)
India’s AI scene isn’t all about chatbots or productivity hacks. What’s way more interesting to me is how AI is being used in places like healthcare screening, catching payment fraud, and helping farmers boost their yields. These are super local, high-volume, and deeply practical problems.
The government recently threw over a billion dollars at the IndiaAI mission, hoping to build up domestic compute, foundational models, and AI education. But honestly, the real action seems to be with startups and small businesses, plugging AI into tools that help real-world businesses run smoother and faster.
(If you want to dig deeper, Nature India did a good write-up on the IndiaAI push.)
Source: Nature India – IndiaAI Mission
2. E-Commerce, But Not the Way You Think
India’s e-commerce market is set to triple by the end of the decade, but it’s not just a Flipkart vs. Amazon slugfest. A lot of buyers aren’t even using the big marketplaces. Instead, they’re shopping through WhatsApp groups, following local influencers, or using regional platforms that get their language and quirks.
The tech stack for all this still has a long way to go: logistics, returns, payments, fraud prevention, all that, but the demand is there, especially for middle-class folks outside the big cities who are finally online but still underserved.
Source: Business Standard
3. Health Tech That Actually Moves the Needle
India’s health system is under a ton of strain. Public healthcare is stretched thin, and private care can be out of reach for most. But digital health startups are starting to fill the gap, not just with telemedicine, but with diagnostic tools, insurance discovery, and chronic care support.
There’s also the National Digital Health Mission, which is working on a nationwide health ID system. If that actually gets off the ground, it could mean unified patient records and easier referrals and claims, a total game changer.
Source: Grand View Research
4. Affordable Housing (and All the Boring Stuff Around It)
Here’s a curveball: I’ve started looking into proptech. Not because I’m a real estate buff, but because India’s property market is shifting fast. More people can actually afford to buy homes now, especially in up-and-coming satellite cities.
What’s fascinating is all the stuff around the home itself: co-buying platforms, digital mortgage tools, document verification APIs. It’s not flashy, but it’s the kind of infrastructure that makes everything else possible.
(Reuters covered some recent tax reforms that are shaking up the market.)
Source: Reuters
5. Homegrown Brands That Just Get It
Haldiram’s (one of India’s biggest snack companies) is reportedly in talks for a billion-dollar deal with Temasek. But this isn’t just about snacks. It’s a sign of where spending is headed. Indian consumers are trading up, but often choosing local brands that feel familiar and trustworthy, not just foreign imports.
You see this everywhere: wellness, snacks, clothing, skincare, household goods. I’m betting the brands that win will be the ones that really get local culture and run a tight ship online.
(The FT had a fun piece on Haldiram’s and the broader trend.)
Source: FT
What This Reminds Me Of
All of this feels a bit like China in the early 2000s or Southeast Asia more recently. When demand outpaces infrastructure, you get these buildable gaps. Especially when the end user is mobile-first, cost-conscious, and not well served by existing players.
Of course, India isn’t a copy-paste of any other market. Distribution is messier, regulations are evolving, and consumer behaviour changes wildly by region. But that’s exactly why there’s so much room for original ideas.
References
- Nature India: India’s AI push
- Business Standard: Indian retail growth
- Grand View Research: Digital health in India
- Reuters: Real estate tax reforms
- FT: Temasek-Haldiram investment