Indian startups to set foot in China

China invites Indian startups for business!

Ghizou, a mountainous province around south-west China has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian government and Nasscom so that Indian entrepreneurs could build businesses there. This province has offered around 40 projects that the Indian startups could choose from.

Gagan Sabharwal, director, Global Trade Development, Nasscom, who was in Chennai to invite start-ups from here, said, “Most of the projects are in IoT, analytics, data mining and business intelligence space. Once we receive interest from our Indian members; this list will then be shared with Chinese companies.”

Guizhou has been a part of China’s Internet of Things and Big Data initiatives and has built 12 data centres. Guizhou has been a home centre to the Big Data Industry Expo, that saw the presence of 87,000 people across the world. Thoughts were shared on building a digital economy, artificial intelligence, and IT opportunities.

About this move, Cognizant Technology Solutions vice-chairman Lakshmi Narayanan, said, “They (China) feel time is ripe to collaborate with small and medium enterprises here. They are welcoming companies who want to partner with them. China is strong on the hardware side and we are strong on the software side and we should capitalise on each other’s strengths.”

Akshay Sasikumar, regional head, Nasscom 10,000 startups, said, “In June, start-ups from China are visiting our start-up warehouse in Chennai. We are taking a delegation to China from across India for the big data expo at the Guiyang. Of this, around 10 firms will be from Tamil Nadu.”

Apple, Alibaba, Baidu, Amazon, Infosys, and IBM and other tech bigwigs have already marked their presence in Guizhou.

At a time when China extended its hands to India for business opportunities, how far do you think the startup ecosystem is going to benefit from it?

Source: The Economic Times, The Hindu.