India, Jan. 28 -- In the late 1960s, the US restricted wheat imports to India. At the time, India was heavily dependent on the US for its massive food shortage, and this crunch was a wake-up call, which eventually led to self sufficiency through the Green Revolution.

Sixty years later, India is again on the brink of facing such a situation. This time, however, it's GPUs - which not only power gaming PCs, but also new-age data centres running the AI revolution. But instead of the US, this time around, India may be compelled to look at China for an answer and the Chinese AI project DeepSeek.

The events of this past week around DeepSeek disprove that large language models depend on high-end hardware, and this is where Indian startups could...