Is Kipling's Kim really the forerunner of the modern spy novel?

A recent NYTBR review of a new biography of Rudyard Kipling mentioned the excellence of his novel Kim, written about 1900 and in Vermont no less!, and cited this work as the forerunner of all contemporary spy fiction, including Le Carre and Fleming. That was enough to pique my interest, so I began reading the novel and have read about 1/3 of it and that's enough: Kim is not a spy novel in any sense that we might recognize the genre today. It's at least in the first third a story of an orphaned boy of about 13, child of English/Irish people in India under the Raj, his late father a military man. He's raised w/out any formal education or significant care or parenting - a wild child of North India, much like some of RK's African characters - who joins a Tibetan Buddhist on a journey to find a sacred river and while en route crosses paths w/ his late father's regiment and they adopt him - and that's as far as I got. As to the spying, Kim overhears a military discussion and later relays the information to some of the British troops who at first disbelieve him; clearly this may in later life become a vocation for Kim, but he doesn't seem wily or devious any significant way - merely a smart kid who can get info because those around him don't recognize his perspicacity - and there's nothing in the first third of the novel to foretell his possible adult career in espionage. He is neither a Bond nor a Smiley. Still, we can see that there's plenty of adventure in this tale - and I'm pretty sure that it was made into a Disney movie or animated feature (or both) - plenty of action and plenty of exoticism. All I can say is go see the movie, as the novel is antiquated and far beyond quaint, full of overwritten passages, clumsy attempt at vernacular dialogue, lots of pasted-on exoticism (references to names, places, sects), all of which make for rough going right from the start. RK is known and today largely ignored because of his colonial, Eurocentric vision; this novel will do nothing to change one's opinion on that score, despite RK's occasional sympathy for the noble character of the Tibetan holy man.