In a world where tech dollars behave a bit like lovestruck teenagers—eager, impulsive, and occasionally irrational—their crush on India has been remarkably consistent. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta: they all treat India the way luxury brands treat Paris Fashion Week. There are investments, commitments, declarations of digital love, and multi-billion-dollar engagements in the form of AI labs, cloud regions, and glittery new offices.

Meanwhile, Pakistan sits across the digital dance floor, offering a polite smile and the occasional hopeful wave. It is not ignored entirely — there are training programmes, small-scale investments, and encouraging remarks — but Big Tech isn’t exactly sliding into Islamabad’s DMs with a USD 10-billion infrastructure proposal.

Why this asymmetry? Why does Big Tech spend its evenings whispering sweet nothings into Bangalore’s ears while offering Islamabad little more than cordial handshakes and developer workshops? The answer is not one silver bullet but a constellation of political, economic, demographic, and reputational factors — all orbiting around one simple truth: India offers a scale and stability that corporations crave; Pakistan does not yet offer the same predictability.

If tech investment were a planet, its gravitational pull would depend heavily on population. India boasts over 1.4 billion people—a galaxy of potential users, subscribers, data-creators, coders, and consumers. Pakistan’s 240 million is large by global standards but does not deliver the same “hyperscale-cloud-region” excitement that Boardrooms crave.

For Big Tech, population is not just a number—it’s a business model. A USD 5 monthly subscription multiplied by 1.4 billion people? Suddenly, you have revenue projections that would make even Jeff Bezos blush. Multiply that by Pakistan’s 240 million? Still substantial, but not enough to justify a USD 3-billion AI supercomputer farm next to the Indus River.

When Microsoft picks a location for a new data center,........

© Business Recorder