I live in Bengaluru. I'm surrounded by some of the most talented engineers in the world. B.Tech graduates from IITs, NITs, BITS. People who can ship SaaS platforms, train AI models, build security tools, run growth marketing campaigns that would make a Silicon Valley CMO jealous.
These are my people. I'm one of them.
And I have to ask a question that's been sitting in my chest for months:
We have the skills. Why aren't we protecting our own country?
Here's what the average day looks like
9 AM — log into a Slack workspace owned by a US company.
10 AM — stand-up with a manager in San Francisco.
11 AM to 7 PM — build products, dashboards, AI features, SaaS tools, security platforms.
7 PM — log off. Weekend parties. Monday, repeat.
The work is real. The paycheque is real. The LinkedIn title looks great.
But here's what I can't stop thinking about:
The product you just helped ship
The product you just helped ship — the one with the AI-powered "enterprise security" for Fortune 500 companies — that same company will sell it back to Indian enterprises at dollar pricing. Your employer will charge ₹50 lakh a year for what you built. And the average Indian shopkeeper, college student, retired teacher? They'll never afford it. They'll never even hear about it.
We are building the shields. They are being used on other people.
Meanwhile, in the same country
- 702 cyber attacks hit Indian systems every minute.
- ₹22,845 crore is stolen from Indian citizens every year.
- Deepfake scams are targeting mothers and fathers who've never heard the word "deepfake."
- Kids from slum areas — who never got proper digital education — are getting pulled into cybercrime rings, used as mules, as scammers, as scapegoats.
And we, the people with the actual skills to stop this, are too busy shipping v2.3 of someone else's product.
I'm not judging anyone for having a job
I'm not saying quit your corporate role. Bills are real. EMIs are real. Parents waiting for their son to "settle" are real.
But here's the question I want every skilled engineer in Bengaluru to sit with:
After 9 to 5, what are you building for your own country?
One Saturday a month. One side project. One open-source tool that protects a user who can't pay for enterprise security. One fraud-detection script you share with your family's WhatsApp group.
Anything. Even one thing.
Because here's the uncomfortable truth: the foreign companies we work for will not protect India. That's not their job. Their job is their shareholders. Fair enough.
But whose job is it to protect us?
If not the people with the skills — who?
If not the people in Bengaluru, in Hyderabad, in Pune, in Gurgaon — who?
If not us — who?
The gap isn't neutral
A skilled person who doesn't use their skills for their own people isn't neutral. They're leaving a gap. And that gap gets filled — by scammers, by fraud rings, by bad actors who know exactly how to exploit the 90% of Indians the cybersecurity industry ignores.
When someone from a slum area gets pulled into a scam ring, it's not just their failure. It's partially ours — the skilled ones who had the tools to build better alternatives and chose not to.
That's a black spot on every one of us who has the capability and chose comfort.
I'm a solo founder
No team, no funding, no safety net. I build privacy and cybersecurity tools for Indians, and I give them away for free. Because I decided I'd rather sleep at night knowing I tried than sleep at 5 AM knowing I billed a US company for another feature.
I'm not asking you to do what I did. I'm asking something smaller:
One hour a week. For India. From the skills you already have.
That's it.
If ten thousand skilled engineers in Bengaluru gave one hour a week to Indian cybersecurity, Indian privacy, Indian digital literacy — the scam rings would collapse within a year.
We have the skills. We have the numbers. We have the talent.
What we don't have — yet — is the conviction.
Built for humans. Against the machine.
— Solo founder, Seerror. Bengaluru bedroom. 🫡