However, But India barely has the kind of interests, state-apparatus or companies that'd want something like this to succeed. They have Flipkart, which is barely an Alibaba...
Flipkart last week announced a Designed and engineered in India Smartphone [1].
And this was done by a homegrown company smartron.com. Their website shows how heavily invested they are in IoT (apart from mobile phones). This company was founded by a Mahesh Lingareddy, who it seems was a co-founder for a company which was acquired by Intel for $250 million.[2] - so he has all the resources (or credibility to raise funds) to put in place the execution plan for their vision of "India’s first global brand with focus on innovation, design, engineering, products and platforms." [3]
Or in other words, things are changing - past is not an indication for future failures.
[1] www.flipkart.com/billion-smartphone-launch-store
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/technologyinvesting/2-acqu...
[3] http://www.smartron.com/about.html
More about Smartron: www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/smartron-plans-rs-1500cr-investment-to-expand-operations/article9622268.ece