One of technology’s most remarkable second acts is underway, and India is playing the host for it. Blackberry—a name thought to have disappeared from the world’s innovation map—is quietly scripting a comeback.

“Just a few years ago, we had zero headcount in India. Now, the Blackberry QNX Hyderabad Centre employs over 100 engineers,” said Dhiraj Handa, the company’s senior vice president for the Asia-Pacific region.

At the centre of it is the company’s QNX software. Built on microkernel architectureMicrokernel architectureAn operating-system design in which only essential services, such as memory-management and process-scheduling, run in kernel space. Other services like device drivers and file systems run in the user space and communicate with the kernel via message passing, QNX forms the foundation on which automakers stack everything—from infotainment and navigation to assisted braking and battery-monitoring systems.

In fact, the top 10 global automakers, 24 of the top 25 electric-vehicle makers, and nine of the top 10 medical original equipment manufacturers use QNX for foundational software requirements. Put simply, Blackberry—which once powered emails and BBM messages for 70–80 million subscribers—is now the brain behind over 255 million vehicles across the world.

While globally, QNX holds around 40%Mordor IntelligenceAutomotive Operating Systems Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts of the automotive OS market, Mahindra and Tata Motors are among its key adopters in India, besides tech-services firms TCS, Wipro, and Tata Elxsi, and software provider VVDN Technologies.

In September, Blackberry also partnered with Medha Servo Drives, a Hyderabad-based rail-automation firm, to build safety software for metro and monorail projects.

These partnerships have helped the company maintain its growth in its IoT division, especially when revenue from its other division, cybersecurity, has been declining. In fact, QNX accounted for nearly 45% of Blackberry’s overall revenue of $500 million in 2025. While the overall number is only a fraction of its peak-time top line, the direction is finally upward.

But QNX’s dominance raises a subtle paradox for its current nerve centre.

India is home to some of the world’s finest IT talent.