India Inc won’t fund R&D—but it might bankroll an escape from reality

India Inc would part with their money to invest in R&D as eagerly as Lalita Pawar as a mum in a 70s movie would let her only son move with his wife into another house. Instead, it's always about waiting for an innovation to 'drop' from elsewhere that can be jugaad-ed on the cheap.

But here's a tech in which India's 'innovative' bunch can stop pretending and actually put their money into genuine pioneering stuff: VR-AR.

Why on earth, you ask? For two reasons. One, urban India outdoors is a mess with its gorgeously bad traffic, concentration-camp air and without any aesthetic - never mind beautiful - urban space to speak of even for the rich.


Two, there are an awful lot of rich people who secretly wish they had 'foreign' outside their windows than having to go abroad for it. If there's any tech that has a humongous demand no one knows about yet, it's virtual/augmented reality.

VR isn't about enhancing reality but about mercifully replacing it. With Viksit India not just a moonshot but a vodka shot on Mars, slipping into a headset and haptic suit in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore will, in one stroke of a control panel, turn your outdoors in India 'first world'.

Make India's urban dystopia its competitive spur. Worse the outdoors, greater the incentive to escape reality - without having to cocoon yourself inside your Manhattan-modelled mansion.