A Bengaluru-based founder has shared his take on “why young people in India are getting frustrated”, blaming the job market and rising inflation. Rohan Mayya, co-founder of Aeos Games, claimed that the traditional path of getting a degree, finding a stable job and building wealth is breaking down amid AI-driven job disruption. This, in turn, has sparked dissatisfaction amid educated youngsters who cannot find jobs.
Mayya, a Y Combinator alum, shared his thoughts in a social media post which has prompted a discussion about the current state of the world.
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Graduates who can’t find jobs
“A short primer on why young people in India are getting frustrated and what I'm observing around me,” Mayya wrote on X, adding the disclaimer: “Not mincing my words.”
The Bengaluru-based entrepreneur noted that India produces roughly 10 million graduates every year. Of these, engineers make up about 1.5 million.
Since the Covid pandemic of 2020, many graduates have struggled to find jobs. The job market faced further disruptions with the AI race that began in 2023 and led to several cycles of layoffs in major tech companies.
Mayya argued that India has produced a huge pool of educated, digitally-skilled youngsters, but not enough jobs to absorb them. “Many can't find meaningful work,” he wrote.
No alternatives to tech salaries
{{/usCountry}}Mayya argued that India has produced a huge pool of educated, digitally-skilled youngsters, but not enough jobs to absorb them. “Many can't find meaningful work,” he wrote.
No alternatives to tech salaries
{{/usCountry}}Tech jobs have been disproportionately affected by the advent of artificial intelligence. With fewer entry-level tech jobs on the market and several laid-off techies, the dissatisfaction has grown.
Mayya pointed out how there are no viable alternatives to tech jobs in India. Manufacturing is difficult for ordinary people to enter, India’s R&D spending remains low, and physical businesses are plagued by bureaucracy and infrastructure problems.
“We are not inherently a manufacturing country the way China is, and ordinary people don't know how to enter manufacturing either. No R&D muscle, so everyone who wants to do research *has* to go abroad (our R&D expenditure is only like 0.7% of GDP),” the entrepreneur noted.
“Corruption and bureaucracy makes it challenging to do things in the physical world, software was the only haven,” he opined.
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Rising inflation and real estate prices
The growing unemployment in India, Mayya said, has been coupled with rising inflation. The rising inflation is “eating away at what you have,” he wrote on X, while stock market has not grown, so people have not got any capital gain on their savings.
Meanwhile, real estate prices have also become unaffordable. “Housing prices ballooning with real estate sitting in its own bubble ($300k for an average apartment),” he wrote.
The founder of Aeos Games noted how just a decade ago, a degree was a guaranteed path to landing a job. That is no longer the case. And because of this, there is a sense among young people that they have done what they were told to do — get educated, acquire skills and work hard — but the economic bargain they were promised no longer exists.
“Degrees are mostly worthless,” he opined, and pointed to the economy’s “K-shaped recovery” which benefits only the top 1%.
“My only hope is that in the long term, tech is the one true deflationary factor, which hopefully fixes a lot of this,” the Bengaluru founder concluded.