Tech investor and author Balaji Srinivasan, who was a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz, said he’s bullish on anything that is internet first within India.
“I am moderately optimistic in India and extremely optimistic in Indians,” he said. “I think the Indian state has done a good job in the last several years, but it’s difficult to manage a billion-plus people and so on. But if you combine them with the Indian diaspora and the Indian network, that’s a very formidable thing.”
Srinivasan was in conversation with Sajith Pai, partner at early-stage investment firm Blume Ventures, at the ET World Leaders Forum in New Delhi on Saturday.
“I’m extremely bullish on the Indian Network, of which we see the Indian state as a subset,” he said. “What’s the Indian Network? That’s all of the technological, political, finance, media figures that have arisen now… globally. With the advent of Reliance Jio, a billion Indians are now actually full internet citizens. They can actually sign smart contracts. They can communicate, they can transact with anybody else online.”
He underscored that this was in contrast with what happened in China, which closed off its network to the world.
“India’s network, its key characteristic, is that it is integrated with the rest of the English-speaking world, and really the rest of the world,” Srinivasan said. “And so, the emergence of that would be completely different. So I’m very bullish on anything that is internet first within India, where it’s essentially developed with the idea that you’re an internet Indian, you’re global given the international perspective.”
Earlier this year, Srinivasan moved from the US to an island off Singapore to set up his own Network School, where he will run programmes on cryptocurrencies and “technocapitalism.”
In 2022, Srinivasan published a book called The Network State: How to Start a New Country. It conceptualises the idea of setting up sovereign states by internet groups.
Srinivasan is a cryptocurrency evangelist, and said on Saturday that he was a “little disappointed in people framing that cryptocurrency is anti-sovereignty.”
“It actually enhances India’s sovereignty… because it’s not being the number one or the number two (currency) globally, it can be the number three. You can pursue open source,” he said. “Rather than having the dollar versus the renminbi (Chinese currency), it (India) can have the rupee domestically and cryptocurrency globally, and it can be stronger, it can be accepted everywhere, and it cannot be blocked anywhere.”
A smart contract can be signed by a Brazilian, a Japanese, an Indian and an American, he said.
“You have a neutral court that orbits it, and US judges or Chinese courts can’t freeze those funds,” Srinivasan said. “So abroad, India and Indians are stronger with cryptocurrency and at home rupee is fine. But just like you have domestic and international communications on WhatsApp, domestic and international transactions with rupee and cryptocurrency are complementary to each other.”
Citing the aforementioned Indian Network, Srinivasan said that India’s mode of emerging on the global scene will be different from that of the US or China.
“I think the types of things that Indians and India will be good at will be those things that are based on this global network,” he said. “So, for example, Polygon is maybe the first Indian breakout, because it’s not really Indian, it’s on a chain, it’s a crypto company. There’s crypto protocols. Maybe the single largest Indian global breakout in the sense of something that somebody in France, Argentina or Mexico would use without thinking of it as Indian.”
He was referring to blockchain startup Polygon, backed by the likes of Tiger Global, SoftBank and Peak XV Partners.
