I've seen this pattern play out across a dozen startup ecosystems-not just India. The real tragedy isn't ignorance, it's the theatre of expertise. When a founder says "this is a five-minute task," they're revealing their own shallow understanding dressed up as authority. The whole chain breaks because nobody wants to admit they're learning in public.
The link-building factory model you describe is systemic. Companies optimise for billable hours, not outcomes. Interns get trained to repeat patterns, not to think. The result? An entire generation of SEOs who can run reports but can't diagnose why rankings shifted after a core update.
Your point about free resources is spot-on. Google's own documentation, Search Central office hours, and a handful of people who actually publish their process (not their case studies) are worth more than any paid course. The best SEO education I've seen came from someone who spent a year breaking-then fixing-their own e‑commerce site.
Amit Tiwari is a rare voice in that market, but truthfully, the geography matters less than the mindset. The moment someone stops blaming the platform and starts building something of their own to test, that's when the fog lifts. Two years of unpaid groundwork beats two years of a certification any day.
