How India can lead the global wisdom economy

This actually captures a larger paradox. Walk through any global city today and you’ll find yoga studios at every corner, turmeric lattes in trendy cafes, and meditation apps generating revenue from techniques codified in Sanskrit from thousands of years ago. Yet, somehow, India neither owns this narrative nor captures proportional value from it.

We’ve become an unnamed source of a global cultural revolution we don’t even lead.

What Korea and China got right

Korea understood something we didn’t. When the 1997 financial crisis nearly destroyed their economy, they made culture an export strategy. But apparently they were quite clever at it. They didn’t try to sell traditional Korean music to the world. BTS doesn’t perform traditional Korean music or wear their traditional hanbok. Instead, Korea created something entirely new but still felt unmistakably Korean. The discipline, the harmony and the emotional intensity with which they did it is commendable. These weren’t cultural artifacts but cultural values, expressed in a language the world could understand.

China’s approach was different, but equally strategic. Its Guochao (literally “national tide”) movement didn’t emerge organically. It was cultivated carefully by the government. When Li-Ning showed up at the Paris Fashion Week in 2018 with “China Li-Ning” plastered across streetwear, it wasn’t just fashion. It was a declaration that Chinese identity could be modern, aspirational and cool. Eventually, they transformed “Made in China” from an apology to a badge of honor.

Our authenticity problem

India’s problems are more than a marketing strategy. We’re still carrying colonial baggage that taught us to see our own culture as museum pieces. After Independence, instead of challenging this framework, we often reinforced it. The Handicrafts Board, established in 1952, positioned Indian crafts as cottage industries to be preserved, not scaled. Compare this to Japan’s approach: they took traditional craftsmanship and evolved it into global brands like Toyota’s kaizen philosophy or Nintendo’s approach to play.

We became obsessed with preserving tradition rather than evolving it. Our language and political discourse are also about “preserving culture,” “preserving history and tradition,” “we should not forget our past.” Handlooms became a symbol of protection, not innovation. Similarly, we turned our classical arts into artifacts for preservation instead of tools for expression. We turned ourselves into curators of our own civilization instead of becoming its contemporary practitioners.

As a result, most “Indian” brands fall into tired boring categories. There’s this rustic handicraft story full of rural artisan photographs. The luxury boutiques selling “heritage” to the urban elites. The NGO-style initiative that treats culture as charity rather than commerce. What’s missing is confident brands that marry Indian cultural intelligence with world-class execution and accessibility.

There are rare but powerful examples that show what this evolution can look like. Indian Accent, for instance, has taken the depth of Indian culinary traditions and reimagined them in a modern, global fine-dining format. It does not present Indian food as rustic or nostalgic, but as sophisticated, inventive and world-class. That’s exactly the kind of reinterpretation we need to see across other categories if Indianness is to move from heritage preservation to contemporary aspiration.

The Indian wisdom we’re wasting

I believe India has something Korea and China lack: philosophical frameworks that address humanity’s biggest challenges. While they export products and entertainment, our natural strength should be exporting ways of thinking.

Consider the raga system. It’s not just music theory but a revolutionary approach to innovation. How do you create infinite variations within a structured framework? (Did you know: With just seven notes, the raga system can generate over 300 distinct musical frameworks). That’s the question every startup, every creative industry, every organization grapples with. Can we use and position raga as a business methodology?

Or take Ayurveda. Everyone reduces it to herbal medicine, but its real genius from what I understand is systems thinking. Understanding how everything connects to everything else. In our specialist, fragmented world, this holistic approach is exactly what’s needed. The global wellness industry is worth over roughly $6 trillion, built largely on Indian philosophical foundations. Yet, India captures almost none of that value or recognition.

Perhaps trying to create one “Indian” identity is the mistake. Tamil cinema doesn’t succeed by being generically Indian. It succeeds by being authentically Tamil while telling universal stories. RRR didn’t conquer global audiences by diluting its Telugu roots but by amplifying them. Each region of India represents distinct cultural intelligence. Bengali intellectual traditions, Gujarati business acumen or Punjabi entrepreneurial energy. Rather than forcing unity, maybe we need to really harness this diversity as our competitive advantage (which we speak about a lot).

For example, Silicon Valley is not uniformly American but it’s distinctly Californian.

So what should we do?

Indian philosophy for the world

I don’t have an answer. But I think the real opportunity isn’t in making Indian culture trendy. It’s in making Indian ways of thinking indispensable.

Educational institutions should teach Indian frameworks as problem-solving tools, not just as history. Businesses should attempt to operate on distinctly Indian principles while solving global business challenges. Creative industries should use our narrative structures like the moral complexity we see in the Mahabharata or the systems thinking as we discussed embedded in Ayurveda or the improvisational genius of raga.

I’m not talking about cultural nationalism or heritage preservation, which is what most brands default to. This is about recognizing that our deepest assets aren’t just artifacts but systems of thought that are waiting to be enacted.

China is the world’s factory and Korea its entertainment hub. India’s opportunity is more profound: becoming the intellectual infrastructure for how humanity navigates complexity, builds community and understands consciousness in an age of AI.

The world seems to be ready and already hungry for what we have. Every meditation app, every wellness retreat, every corporate mindfulness programme is reverse engineering our traditions. The question isn’t why we haven’t scaled “Indianness.”

The world is drowning in information but starving for wisdom and India should not be just another player. We can be and should be the game itself.

Anshul Khandelwal is a strategic operating adviser and previously headed marketing for Ola, Ola Electric and UpGrad.