India's Digital Dilemma: Why It Doesn't Own Attention Despite Massive User Base

• India is a massive digital market with 806 million internet users, the second-largest globally, and the largest market for YouTube.
• Despite its scale, India does not own attention; global companies control platforms determining what Indians watch and engage with.
• Foreign entities profit significantly from algorithmically creating culture across India's linguistic diversity, with Meta and Google earning over Rs 60,000 crore annually.
• Unlike ByteDance's TikTok, which built an engine of cultural production, Indian platforms have struggled with weaker recommendation engines, shallower retention, and fragmented monetization.
• India's choice to optimize for openness and interoperability has made it harder to build a system that can capture and concentrate attention, risking reliance on imported culture.