Picture it like that 1980s’ Bollywood song. "One Two ka Four. Four Two Ka One."The world’s most populous country is one big market, with three distinct market segments interconnected by common technologies. Two Gujarat-based giant conglomerates with political connections lead the local charge. Two global technological behemoths based in the US partner with them.And then, one out-of-the-box philosophy graduate and MBA dropout from Mumbai, Kunal Shah, is about to head arguably the world’s biggest mobile messaging platform that has 3.3 billion users spread across 180 countries. No, Meta AI Can’t Read All Individual and Group WhatsApp ChatsAll those things lead us to four questions. Was it a mere coincidence that Facebook owner Meta announced a huge investment in Indian financial technology startup CRED days after the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries announced IPO plans for Jio Platforms, its telecom-led tech digital supermarket called Jio Platforms? What are the long-term implications of Gautam Adani-led Adani Group’s foray into the data centre business in partnership with search-giant Google owner Alphabet? What happens to homegrown startups like PayTm, PhonePe, IndiaMart, MobiKwik, and Meesho—and indeed, public sector banks or telecom giant Airtel, as global giants and Indian titans wrestle to serve a growing market of 1.5 billion people? What does all this mean for governments, lawmakers, and regulators in an era of disruptive technologies as the US and India wrestle over an ambitious but contentious trade deal in the offing? Don’t look for all the answers yet. Keeping these questions in mind is good enough. The game is wide open. 'The Taj Story': When WhatsApp Forwards Become a 165-Minute FilmKunal Shah and the Economics of Big TechLet’s start with the big news of the week: the naming of Kunal Shah, who founded CRED as a serial entrepreneur as Meta-owned WhatsApp’s new global head even as Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta announced a $900-million (Rs 8,550 crore) significant minority investment in Shah’s fintech startup officially called Dreamplug Technologies at a $4.5 billion valuation—with no access to CRED’s customer data that contains a goldmine of India’s most creditworthy individuals. In his new role, Shah now has a global playfield, which matches his intricate philosophy-meets-technology mind with WhatsApp’s global tentacles.His CRED brings in a fresh way of looking at digital proliferation, as it weighs the high quality of its users and then offers them everything from rewards and loans to e-commerce deals and peer-to-peer community lending. CRED’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption gives it more potential muscle. WhatsApp gets to build in a premium market segment, though with data privacy and regulatory caveats, with India accounting for more than 800 million WhatsApp users. Since a pilot project was launched in 2018, WhatsApp Pay has grown with UPI (Unified Payments Interface) and has regulatory clearance for 500 million users. It can address everything from shopping to tickets and a prepaid wallet. CRED’s able team and experience can provide it with expansionary ballast. Do remember that Meta also owns Facebook and Instagram as a media giant. Geek power can bring in hidden combo plans to keep revenues buzzing. Big question: Will that bite off big revenue chunks from India’s slothful public sector banks even as Meta brings the UPI magic and India’s digital public infrastructure moves to the rest of the planet? So far, CRED has focused on credible high-end customers, in stark contrast to PayTm, PhonePe, and Jio, that focus on the mass market where volume and scale drive growth. Google and Reliance Jio have been focused a lot on India’s vast small businesses, carving out an intermediate market where value meets volumes.Banning Telegram is a Disproportionate Response to the NEET Paper Leak CrisisThe Indian Market PieLet’s turn the focus to Mukesh Ambani, whose Reliance Industries has been betting on India’s demographic transition since his late father Dhirubhai’s heyday in the 1980s. From launching a payments bank to a share listing of Jio Financial Services in 2023, Reliance now has a financial prowess that can connect with its Jio Platforms as well as its retail arm. Telecom, finance, and retail are seemingly unconnected but loaded with potential for cross-selling and consolidation of customers. Jio Financial already does lending, owns a mutual fund in partnership with US giant BlackRock and has a growing payments engine. On the face of it, Reliance’s Meta partnership is focused on software, AI, and “enterprise solutions”—a broad term to serve the technological needs of companies. Meta’s $5.7 billion investment in Jio Platforms, announced in 2020, has been strengthened by a planned 168-megawatt AI-driven data centre to be built by Reliance in Gujarat. Reliance talks of data nationalism and sovereignty (shades of which is evident in the CRED deal details) and will lease out its facility to Meta. Meta is playing in a rich business market, but one that is attached to a political minefield in which the Ambanis are seasoned players.Meta and Reliance have a separate joint venture to build on the US giant’s Llama platform that loops into addressing Indian software developers, who must form a key part of a tech-driven business ecosystem. All that sounds like grounds for a monopoly. But what we could be looking at is a duopoly of sorts with the Ambanis and Adanis closing in on a common market, with Google owner Alphabet powering up the Adanis. Call it a quadropoly, if you will. Forty-seven-year-old Kunal Shah may have to bring in all his philosophical abstractions into play as he straddles a global vision with desi roots. The fact that his family has seen bankruptcy in his teenage years, which saw him work part-time as a delivery boy, should make his career a fascinating tale for a future Web series or Bollywood epic. Shah’s FreeCharge sale for Rs 2,800 crore to Snapdeal ranks as a big deal startup folklore. He doesn’t need the money but still has to earn the greatness that is now being thrust upon him. There are those who say that Freecharge ultimately went to Axis Bank for a pittance, and CRED is also steeped in losses despite having 17 million high-value users. The profitability game is not the same as the valuation game. But CRED is managing Rs 22,000 crore in lending assets through its banking partnerships, which stand like a runway platform for future growth.Cloud Power: Big Tech's Grip on AI and StartupsGoogle Pay Set to RiseGoogle Pay has grown steadily in India since its entry in 2017 by focusing a lot on small businesses, and ranks behind PhonePe and PayTm as a UPI funnel. It has an estimated Indian user base of 70 million and controls about a third of the overall market. It would be wise to remember that most phones in India’s estimated 700 million smartphone users are linked to Google’s Android platform that needs Gmail accounts. If political connections and Big Tech chutzpah matter, Google is cruising. Its strategic alliance with the Adani Group to build digital infrastructure with a focus on AI and clean energy may offer solid ground to impress political leaders and regulators as growth gambits meet digital sovereignty. Google officially launched plans to build a $15 billion “AI data centre” project in Visakhapatnam last April as its biggest investment thus far outside of the US. If you read the fine print in all those deals and deeds involving Meta, Google, the Adanis and the Ambanis, you may see significant contours of a US-India trade deal expected soon. A lot has happened between the two countries in recent months involving these two industrial groups. But the "One-Two-Ka-Four" promise of that 1989 song has huge implementation risks. How all that pans out in the future is not as easy as it may look, though the numbers evoke awe. AI is likely to be a roller-coaster worldwide as ground realities and hype are matched to measure in the coming days. What is, however, clear is that India, with hundreds of millions of smartphone users and thousands of IT companies and talented developers, is going to be a big playground for AI. (The author is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He can be reached on Twitter @madversity. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)