It’s 5:56 PM on a Monday evening in August. My day began with a news alert on my phone: an Indian AI startup, barely two years old, had just secured a hundred-million-dollar funding round, hitting the coveted billion-dollar “unicorn” status. The founders, both under 30, were pictured in a gleaming glass-walled boardroom, looking out over the city skyline.
Just an hour ago, I stepped out to grab a coffee from a small cart down the lane. The vendor, a man probably in his late 60s, expertly scanned my UPI QR code, checked the confirmation on his modest smartphone, and then handed me my drink. He didn’t just accept a digital payment; he managed his inventory on a simple app and used another to order his supplies directly from a wholesaler, bypassing three layers of middlemen.
In that moment, it hit me. We aren’t just one country anymore. We Indians are living and operating in a multiverse.
On one plane of existence, we have the Boardroom Unicorns 🦄. This is the India of headlines, of IPOs and global ambitions. It’s a world of pitch decks, term sheets, and scaling-up. This universe is essential. It’s the engine of our formal economy, attracting foreign investment, creating high-paying jobs, and planting the Indian flag firmly on the global stage. It’s the reason why the world’s biggest tech companies are run by people of Indian origin. This is our narrative of power and progress.
But simultaneously, in a parallel reality, is the universe of the On-Ground Superheroes 🦸♀️. These are the millions of everyday Indians who are leveraging technology and their own ingenuity to solve real-world problems. They aren’t chasing valuations; they are chasing solutions.
- The ASHA worker in a remote village using a tablet to track vaccinations, saving countless infant lives.
- The farmer in Maharashtra using a simple WhatsApp-based bot to get real-time weather alerts and crop disease information.
- The woman leading a self-help group in Rajasthan, using a digital ledger to manage micro-loans that fund local enterprises.
These are our superheroes. They don’t wear capes; they wield smartphones. Their superpower isn’t flight; it’s the creative adoption of technology to create grassroots change. They are the ones turning our famed “demographic dividend” into a tangible reality.
For years, these two universes seemed to run in parallel, barely touching. But now, something is changing. We’re not just progressing; we are taking a quantum leap because these multiverses are beginning to collide and merge.
The real magic, the quantum entanglement that will define our future, happens at the intersection. The UPI platform, a product of unicorn-level thinking and national-scale infrastructure, is the ultimate tool for the on-ground superhero. An agritech startup in Bangalore (the unicorn) builds a drone that a farmer in Punjab (the superhero) uses to spray his fields with precision, saving water and money. A fintech company (the unicorn) creates a platform that allows the street vendor (the superhero) to get a small business loan without ever stepping into a bank.
So, this brings me back to the question: Is this the age of superheroes or unicorns?
I believe it’s a false choice. We are realising that unicorns that exist only in their boardrooms, solving problems for the top 1%, are merely mythical beasts with a limited lifespan. And our on-ground superheroes, for all their incredible grit, need the tools, platforms, and infrastructure that the unicorns can build to scale their impact.
The true quantum leap for India won’t be defined by the number of unicorns we create, but by the number of on-ground superheroes each unicorn empowers. Our greatest challenge and our biggest opportunity is to ensure that the minds in the gleaming towers are building for the hands in the dusty lanes.
This is the age of both. And the future of India depends on them working together. 🚀What do you think can we continue to exist in a multiverse or hope for them merge into Bolder India.
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