India Does Not Lack Talent. We Are Just Looking for It the Wrong Way.

Let me begin with something important.

I still do not like writing.

I was pushed into it. Forced, even. There was no paperwork involved, but enough pressure that resistance felt pointless. Strangely though, I am starting to enjoy it a little now. Not enough to admit it publicly, but enough to keep going.

This article exists because of a belief I used to hold myself.

That there are not enough good candidates out there.

I believed it genuinely. I said it out loud. I defended it in conversations. And after seeing the hiring market closely, I believe that idea is wrong.

India does not lack talent.

What India lacks is a fair, clean way to surface it.

The absolute numbers matter

India has a humongous population. The absolute number is not just large, it is overwhelming.

Even if a small percentage of people are genuinely capable, curious, and disciplined, the sheer base size means the probability of not finding good people is actually very low.

If you are hiring in India and you say you cannot find good candidates, there is a high chance you are looking in the wrong way, or asking for the wrong things, or filtering incorrectly.

That was my ideology too, until I saw the system from both sides.

A job post that explains the problem perfectly

Just yesterday, I came across a job post.

It asked for:

• Five front-end frameworks
• Three back-end frameworks
• Multiple database systems
• DevOps experience

The pay was $600.

Somewhere along the way, we decided it was normal to ask for everything and offer very little. This is not just unfair, it actively damages the talent ecosystem.

When expectations are unrealistic, candidates stop being honest. They inflate. They pretend. They copy. They rely on AI to fill gaps instead of learning properly.

Then we complain that the quality is bad.

What actually happens when you post a job

The moment you post a job, applications flood in. 100. 150. Sometimes more.

Most people are not serious. That is expected in any large market.

So you introduce a filter. An assignment.

Now maybe 20 to 25 people submit. I am being optimistic here. Often it is closer to 15.

Then you open the submissions.

This is where people conclude that talent does not exist.

The code is duct-taped together. The logic is unclear. The structure is missing. Many submissions are clearly AI-generated, and the candidate cannot explain a single decision.

This feels like a contradiction to what I said earlier. It is not.

Talent is not the same as signal

India does not lack talent.

India lacks good signals of talent at scale.

The current system rewards speed over thought. Volume over clarity. Buzzwords over understanding.

People are optimizing to apply fast, not to apply well.

So the real talent gets buried under noise.

I am not against AI. I am against not understanding your own work.

I am not against AI-written code.

I am against submitting AI-written code that you cannot explain.

If you understand what the AI wrote, if you can defend the decisions, if you can modify it confidently, that is fine.

But most submissions today are surface-level. They work barely. They collapse under one follow-up question.

You cannot run real systems like this. You cannot build for real users with duct tape.

A very low bar that is still not met

What makes this frustrating is that the bar is not even high.

If you want a developer internship or a full-time role, how hard is it to build a clean CRUD API? With proper validation. With readable structure. With a short explanation of why you did what you did.

It really is not that hard if you care.

Most submissions show that people do not.

My experience hiring designers

I faced the same issue while hiring a designer.

Around 20 to 25 people applied. I gave a small assignment. Six submissions came back.

None made me pause. None made me sit back for a few seconds and think, "This person has taste."

That does not mean good designers do not exist.

It means the system failed to surface them.

Expectations without substance

Another uncomfortable reality is expectations.

High expectations are fine if you have quality to back them up.

Many candidates today want top pay, flexibility, and fast growth, which is fair. But they do not bring clarity, ownership, or depth.

You cannot demand excellence while delivering mediocrity.

So what is actually broken?

Not talent.

Process.

Incentives.

Hiring frameworks.

We created a system where:

• companies ask for unrealistic combinations
• candidates respond with inflated profiles
• AI fills the gaps
• everyone feels disappointed

Then we say India lacks talent.

It does not.

If you cannot find good people here, the problem is almost certainly how you are looking, not who exists.

What comes next

In my next article, I will write about the hiring process I actually use.

What I look for. What immediately disqualifies someone. What makes me stop scrolling. And how small, thoughtful signals beat long resumes every single time.

If that helps even a few founders hire better or a few candidates present themselves more honestly, then this writing experiment is worth continuing.

Even if I am still not fully ready to admit that I enjoy writing.