Mishik Sharma

The Real Spy Game Is No Longer Cinematic There was a time when espionage movies reflected the covert realities of the Cold War: double agents, secret messages, trench coats, and tense negotiations in dark alleys. That era is long gone. Today, real-world intelligence operations are more about clouds than cloaks—cloud servers, that is. I recently watched two new spy dramas—"Black Bag" and "The Amateur". Both were gripping, thoughtful, and full of modern anxieties. Yet, they still clung to the same old tropes: lone spies going rogue, last-minute gunfights, and impossible cross-border infiltration. The reality of espionage in 2025 is far less romantic—and far more frightening. Today’s Spying Is About Technology, Not Men in Suits Let’s state this clearly: spying today is a technological game. It is not human-first anymore. Mass data collection via satellites, drones, and fiber-optic taps makes the “field spy” almost irrelevant. Artificial intelligence tools scrape throug...

As the world hurtles deeper into the AI age, a quiet collapse is threatening one of the oldest institutions of modern civilization: the university. For generations, universities were the gateway to prosperity, offering knowledge, status, and above all, employability. But today, that promise is wearing thin—and fast. Across industries, AI is automating entry-level white-collar roles that once offered fresh graduates their first foothold in professional life. Whether it's coding, financial modeling, legal research, or content creation, AI tools are rapidly outperforming the tasks traditionally assigned to junior employees. In doing so, they are rendering many university degrees—including in lucrative disciplines like Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Economics, etc—increasingly irrelevant to the job market. This isn’t a distant dystopia. It’s already here. A Dangerous Gap Between Campus and Market The fundamental problem lies in the widening gulf between what univer...

The news of TCS planning to lay off 12,000 employees by the end of this year has sent ripples across India’s tech and business media. In a sobering trend, more than 1.25 lakh IT professionals have reportedly lost their jobs in India since early 2023 — largely attributed to the accelerating AI-fication of routine tech roles. This development, while unsettling, is not entirely surprising. AI is increasingly automating mechanical entry-level and even mid-level IT work: testing, low-level coding, monitoring, support, BPM tasks — the bread & butter of India's IT giants for decades. But that’s only one part of the story. The other side is less discussed, but far more telling: GCCs (Global Capability Centres) — especially mid-tier ones — are hiring aggressively, not retrenching. While Indian IT firms are trimming their workforce in response to shrinking profit margins from commoditized work, GCCs are onboarding niche engineering talent — AI engineers, chip designers, data scientists, ...

India's data center industry is booming. With about 1 gigawatt of installed capacity today and projections of tripling by the end of this decade, it’s clear that the infrastructure backbone of India’s digital economy is strengthening. But a closer look reveals a glaring imbalance: vast majority of this growth is clustered around metro cities like Mumbai and Chennai,  At the same time, a quiet revolution is brewing — some forward-looking companies are setting up edge data centers in Tier-2, Tier-3, and even Tier-4 towns. This presents a powerful opportunity: to democratise access to compute power and allow regional AI startups to thrive in places that were previously digitally peripheral. But infrastructure alone isn’t enough. The real question is: how do we make AI relevant and productive for Bharat? Rethinking the AI Value Chain Here’s a cascading vision of digital empowerment: Data Centers → Cloud Providers → Local AI Startups → Local SMEs, Farmers, Institutions Data centers hous...

In just a few years, artificial intelligence has gone from research labs to our personal pockets. Millions now interact daily with mass-market AI applications like ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity etc—for help with homework, emotional struggles, writing emails, exploring news, and even preparing job interviews. Much of this access has been free. Powerful tools backed by expensive compute infrastructure and knowledge retrieval pipelines have been made available to all—democratizing capabilities previously available only to experts. But this model is on borrowed time. The Problem with Free AI While enterprises and governments pay for large-scale access to AI services, individual users—by far the largest in number—mostly ride free. And their usage is not trivial. A single detailed query may require access to multiple content sources, inference from large models, memory storage, and server-side rendering—none of which are costless. As the global user base swells into the ...

Social media, at its core, is radically different from all other forms of media. Unlike news media, entertainment media, or sports media — where content is created by centralised producers for mass consumption — social media flips the script. Here, users create content for users. It’s participatory, decentralised, and democratic in form. But here's the contradiction: while the content model is social, the business model remains extractive and centralised. And this mismatch, I believe, is what lies at the heart of today’s growing disillusionment with mainstream social media platforms. The Platform-User Mismatch Social media companies still primarily make money the traditional way: by harvesting attention and selling it to advertisers. It doesn’t matter whether you're a niche creator building meaningful conversations or a rage-bait troll gaming the algorithm — if you generate engagement, you’re profitable. But this has consequences: Creators burn out or get algorithmically sideli...

India stands at the threshold of a profound economic transformation. With per capita GDP nearing $2,900, the nation is currently a "lower-middle-income" country — not poor, but constrained. The goal is clear: cross into upper-middle-income territory. The path, however, is anything but conventional. The dominant developmental paths of the past — East Asia’s manufacturing surge or the West’s innovation-driven capital expansion — may not suit India. Why? Because India is simultaneously labour-rich and resource-tight, technology-ambitious but inclusion-conscious. It needs a unique developmental formula — one that neither locks it into low-wage labour arbitrage nor lets it fall into a high-tech, jobless growth model. The Twin Traps Historically, nations that relied solely on cheap labour often found themselves stagnating in low-value, low-wage ecosystems — the so-called “labour arbitrage trap.” They attracted investment but not innovation. Productivity remained flat, and upward mo...

India boasts a vast network of museums, owned by the Central government, state governments, and some private philanthropies. Yet, most of these museums' collections remain underutilized, often just gathering dust. A promising avenue to unlock their full potential lies in active partnerships between museums and universities. Such collaborations breathe new life into collections by integrating them into vibrant academic programs, research, and community engagement. Many prominent Western universities have a long and distinguished tradition of building and maintaining museums, some of which are centuries old. These university museums —such as the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford (founded in 1683), the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge (established in 1816), and Yale University Art Gallery (established in 1832) — serve as invaluable resources that greatly enhance universities’ teaching and research programs. Historically, these museums began as "Cabinet...

Imagine working from a beachside café in Goa, crafting a marketing campaign for a Mumbai-based fintech startup; or designing a gamified course for an edtech platform while sipping chai in Jaipur. This is the life of India’s digital nomads—freelancers or “one-man firms” who leverage technology and creativity to work remotely, unbound by traditional offices. As India’s digital economy surges toward a projected $1 trillion by 2030, sectors like consumer goods, financial services, travel & hospitality, e-commerce, and e-education are creating a goldmine of opportunities for these agile professionals. But with Global Capability Centers (GCCs) dominating Western outsourcing, where do India’s digital nomads fit? The answer lies in Indian companies and the need for forward-thinking state policies to nurture this ecosystem. Why Western Companies Are Bypassing Digital Nomads Global corporations -- Google and Microsoft, to Citibank and Morgan Stanley, to Amazon and Walmart -- have flocked to ...

India is entering a phase of historic energy transformation — not just in its sources of power, but in the very structure of its industrial and economic landscape. This isn’t merely a shift from brown to green. It’s something deeper, more fundamental, and vastly more consequential. The green energy revolution in India is triggering what we might more accurately call a green re-industrialisation . Let me explain why. A Quiet but Relentless Surge in Demand Across the economy, a growing number of sectors — both traditional and sunrise — are demanding their energy needs be met through green sources. What was once a preference is fast becoming a mandate . And it’s not limited to the usual suspects. Industries like: Data centers (especially those run by hyper-scalers) Green hydrogen manufacturing Steel, cement, and crude oil processing Indian Railways , pushing for full electrification B2B e-commerce logistics and warehousing Large commercial and real estate spaces ...are either contractual...

Bloomberg's Andy Mukherjee’s latest opinion piece — sniggering at India’s legacy billionaire Gen Z for supposedly being “bored” of their family businesses — is hardly an outlier. It’s part of a long tradition in Western financial journalism that looks at Indian wealth with a potent mix of discomfort, disapproval, and condescension. This time, though, the criticism is not just ill-founded — it’s tone-deaf to the massive opportunity this generation represents. Let’s take this piece apart. One Family ≠ All of India’s Business Dynasties Mukherjee builds his entire thesis on the Piramals winding down their legacy luggage business. But the Piramals are not a one-business family — and that luggage brand was far from the family’s economic center of gravity. In fact, they've pivoted toward high-value sectors like pharmaceuticals and financial services. To generalise this as a “pattern” of disinterest across India’s business scions is absurd. Most Legacy Next-Gen Heirs Aren’t Losing Inte...

For most people, the “app-based economy” conjures images of e-commerce, food delivery, logistics apps, and gig work platforms. At most, they might stretch their imagination to B2B apps enabling wholesalers and small retailers. But something far more foundational is quietly unfolding in India’s digital landscape — something that I believe is sociological in scope and significance. We are beginning to see the rise of apps that integrate entire industrial value chains — including those that were once niche, fragmented, and built on informal or ethnic social capital. These aren’t just digital storefronts or service apps. These are platforms that are re-architecting trust, participation, and value creation across traditional industries. Stitching Fragmented Industries Together Consider these examples: Apps that connect construction material-makers, builders, material wholesalers, retailers, and even mistris (micro-builders). Apps that bridge furniture-makers, interior designers, decor suppl...

India’s most dynamic housing transformation may not come from glitzy new suburbs or special economic zones—it’s emerging from something far more grounded: the redevelopment of ageing housing colonies. The current Maharashtra government is auctioning off large-scale redevelopment contracts worth hundreds, even thousands of crores, especially in Mumbai. Developers have been tasked with rebuilding old, often structurally unsound housing societies. What’s unique about this model is that these aren’t just replacement projects; developers are incentivised to add hundreds of new saleable homes in these vertical complexes. Redevelopment as a Supply-Side Solution From a market perspective, the logic is compelling: Developers are incentivised to pay premium bids because they’re allowed to build and sell additional units alongside the obligatory rehab component. The projects are located in already high-demand zones—Dadar, Bandra, Andheri, Chembur—where land is expensive and scarce. This model add...

According to a recent research report by the NGO SII Foundation, in the Indian automobile components industry alone, thousands of workers suffer crippling injuries every year. Some also lose their lives. More than 90% of the injuries result from machines lacking basic safety mechanisms like protective sensors, and more than 70% of the injuries occur because of poor maintenance of machines. Similar dangers persist across India's wider manufacturing sector—from textile mills and food processing plants to defence component workshops. While we debate AI’s impact on coding jobs and call centres, a far more urgent and humane question stares us in the face: why aren’t we using advanced AI models to make India's factories safer, smarter, and more humane? Factories Need AI More Than Offices Do Modern AI has proven itself in office spaces—in HR platforms, design tools, and customer service chatbots. But the factory floor, where lives are on the line daily, remains largely untouched by th...

Over the past few months, Indian Fintech startups like Zerodha, Groww, Upstox, and others have raised millions to tens of millions of dollars in funding, not just to scale operations but to expand their scope—from stock trading to full-spectrum financial services. India’s e-brokerage platforms are no longer just disrupting the way we invest—they’re transforming the very fabric of financial access in the country.  This evolution feels natural. What began as low-cost, no-frills digital trading has grown into something larger: a gateway to insurance, mutual funds, tax filing, loans, and even retirement planning. For the first time, average middle-class Indians—not just high net-worth individuals—have access to modern financial instruments and platforms, often from the palm of their hand. Visibility Is a Strength, Not a Weakness Skeptics often argue that digital platforms encourage risky behavior or lack accountability. But let’s not forget that traditional brokerage and financial advi...

Over the last year, India’s healthcare sector has been booming. Big hospital chains like Apollo, Manipal, Fortis, and Max have struck huge investment deals—some worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re building new hospitals across metros, tier 2, and even tier 3 cities. At the same time, the government is also expanding healthcare in a big way—building new medical colleges, modernising district hospitals, and scaling up schemes like Ayushman Bharat. In many countries, such parallel growth by both private and public players might lead to collision. But that's not going to happen in India. Here, I argue, there’s space for both to grow—and grow rapidly—for at least the next decade. What’s Driving Private Sector Growth? The private healthcare sector isn’t just expanding randomly. It’s responding to a big structural (or 'sociological') change: the growth of the formal economy. As more people get salaried jobs, they’re getting health insurance—through employers, gig platfo...

As global AI companies attract tens of billions of dollars in investment and gear up for hyper-growth, with more and more powerful AI models and softwares, a pressing question arises: Where should these companies create the jobs that these investments would entail? Conventional wisdom suggests that jobs go where the skills are. This is the logic behind decades of outsourcing and offshoring—India benefited from this massively, thanks to its large pool of English-trained engineers and IT professionals. But that logic, I argue, is now outdated. We are entering a new phase of global economic thinking—one driven not just by capabilities, but by entitlements tied to market size. A more equitable, future-facing principle is now emerging: The bigger the market, the deeper the presence. The Trump Doctrine of Market Leverage American President Donald Trump, often derided for his blunt rhetoric, has long insisted that America—the world’s largest consumer market—deserves to be the primary benefici...

Over the past decade, India has achieved something truly remarkable: the near-saturation delivery of basic public services and facilities. From electricity, sanitation, and bank accounts to digital identity, welfare transfers, and housing — the Indian state, especially under the BJP-led central government, has orchestrated one of the largest inclusion exercises in human history. We are no longer a country struggling with reach. We are a country that must now grapple with quality. And this is precisely where India’s private philanthropic sector must rethink its role. For far too long, the dominant instinct among large philanthropic foundations has been to chase scale — reaching more villages, more beneficiaries, more geographies. But that horizontal expansion, while important in the past, now risks becoming redundant in the face of an already expansive state-led welfare architecture. Philanthropy’s New Role: Not Breadth, but Depth What India needs now is not more of the same. It needs s...