The 1980s Label That Still Stings in 2026: Why Believing in Indian Excellence Isn't "Delulu"

A few days ago, a trailer stopped me mid-scroll.

It was for Made in India: A Titan Story, a period drama premiering this June on Amazon MX Player. It follows visionaries like JRD Tata and Xerxes Desai as they fought to build Titan in the 1980s.

But one line hit me like a physical blow. A man tells them, plainly, that Indians are not skilled. That they have no talent. That they are, at best, labourers.

It was forty years ago. Yet it still stings. Why?

Because we are still fighting that exact bias today. Just look at your timeline.

When Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu recently urged tech talent to return home with missionary zeal, Ashneer Grover bluntly fired back on X: "What delulu... Just DON'T."

This clash between Vembu’s idealism and Assignor’s raw cynicism is the defining debate of our generation. It exposes our deep-seated fear that we can be a massive market, but never the gold standard for premium design, quality, and finish.

The tragedy is how much of this we quietly internalized. For decades, when a company wanted to show premium sophistication through design, architecture, or corporate gifting, the default instinct was to look across the border as if excellence was something we had to buy, not create.

As a co-founder building a Pan-India brand from the ground up, I see this hesitation every single day. My team and I built Osmly as a quiet response to that exact mindset, simply to prove that world-class finish and engineering can happen right here on Indian soil.

The data proves the old narrative is dead. According to the Press Information Bureau, India’s Global Innovation Index rank skyrocketed to 38th over the past decade. We now rank 4th globally for Science & Technology clusters and 6th in patent applications.

We aren't just putting together pieces anymore. We are inventing them.

But numbers don't change a culture's heart choices do. Every time a business leader chooses a premium keepsake or a customized piece crafted by local hands over a mass-produced import, they are making a statement.

They are proving that believing in Indian excellence isn't "delulu." It's just good business.

We were never just an assembly line. We were always the craftsmen. The world is finally catching up.

What are your thoughts? Are we closing the gap between what we build and what we value, or do we still default to the import bias?