Posted by New Delhi: India has demonstrated indigenous capability across the digital stack, yet remains dependent on foreign control at a small number of foundational points that have a disproportionate bearing on national resilience, reveals the latest BDIA report.
The Bharath Digital Infrastructure Association (BDIA), a not-for-profit industry body with core focus on India’s digital sovereignty, has launched its new report “Securing India’s Digital Foundations: A National Capability Assessment of Bharat’s Digital Infrastructure Stack and Sovereign Readiness.”
The report provides a comprehensive assessment of India’s digital infrastructure capabilities, strategic dependencies and sovereign readiness across 29 technology domains.
Though, India has built indigenous capability across the digital stack, as per the report, but remains dependent on foreign control at a small number of foundational points that have an uneven bearing on national resilience.
Of the 29 domains assessed, the report states that India shows strong indigenous capability in six, builds competitively on foreign foundations in 11 and can deploy sovereignly through open-source technologies in five.
But in seven domains, India remains genuinely dependent on foreign-proprietary supply. Significantly, all seven of these dependencies are mainly in hardware and materials, rather than software, the report point out.
The assessment comes against the backdrop of a series of documented technology and infrastructure exposures during 2025–26. That includes the suspension of critical technology services, demonstrated risk of abrupt AI technology cut-offs, high concentration in India’s cloud infrastructure and the potential acquisition of emerging indigenous capabilities.
Also, the presence of foreign cryptographic specifications in government procurement, and procurement conditions that can inadvertently disadvantage Indian technology providers, the report listed in its assessment.
According to Bharath Digital Infrastructure Association (BDIA)’s Secretary General Abhishek Bhatt, India’s digital sovereignty must move from principle to practice.
“True sovereignty requires shifting from downstream assembly to mastering the foundational layers of our technology stack. This report provides an evidence-led analysis of India’s indigenous capabilities, highlights critical remaining dependencies, and outlines actionable steps to secure long-term control, continuity, and resilience across our digital infrastructure,” said Bhatt.
“Equally important is ensuring that Indian capabilities have a fair opportunity to scale and compete in the domestic market. We believe this assessment can contribute meaningfully to the ongoing policy conversation, including government’s efforts on a sovereign cloud framework, while creating greater opportunities for India’s indigenous technology and infrastructure ecosystem,” added Bhatt.
The report also highlights that India’s challenge is not one of technological capability alone, but of market realisation, adoption and scale. It identifies indigenous strengths across areas including optical fibre manufacturing, 4G/5G telecommunications, digital public Infrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity, data-centre hardware and semiconductor design.
BDIA report identifies seven foundational areas where India currently lacks either sufficient indigenous manufacturing capability or a practical open substitute. This includes speciality materials and chemistry, subsea cable systems, semiconductor fabrication and tooling, compute, memory and accelerator silicon, storage hardware and media, merchant network silicon, and root-of-trust and cryptographic silicon.
The report recommends a dedicated strategic capability programme for these domains, with defined ownership, funding, timelines and industry partnerships over a period of 5 to 15 years.
The report puts forth 14 recommendations covering immediate, near-term and long-term interventions. These include control-based definition of sovereignty across government procurement, a national AI sovereignty framework, and a forensic audit of cryptographic specifications appearing in government RFPs.
Also, technology-access risk assessments for new foreign-AI government contracts, brand-neutral procurement criteria, threshold-based FDI screening for strategic technology acquisitions, portability and exit-assistance provisions.
The assessment builds on the Bharat Digital Samvad, a national consultation convened by BDIA on 20 May 2026 with approximately 125 participants from government, industry, academia and the startup ecosystem.
The consultation established that digital sovereignty should be viewed as an evolving journey rather than a binary state, that digital infrastructure warrants strategic national treatment, and that claims of indigenous capability must be supported by evidence at the component level.
The report is based on primary product data contributed by 12 BDIA member enterprises and Consocia Advisory, alongside extensive secondary research drawing on public sources including company filings, patent registries, regulatory certification databases and independent trade and academic publications.
The objective of digital sovereignty is not to exclude foreign technology or close India’s market, emphasized BDIA. Rather, the report advocates building a trusted, resilient and globally competitive indigenous ecosystem, while ensuring that Indian capabilities are recognised on evidence and are not unnecessarily excluded from competition through procurement conditions.