China luring Indian tech firms with market access & free rent

Agreements worth about $6 billion have been signed between India and China during the launch of a joint IT platform. Indian firms are thus getting access to China’s $144 billion tech market.

India’s IT industry’s trade group NASSCOM on Sunday established a Sino-Indian Digital Collaborative Opportunities Plaza (SIDCOP) in the tech hub of Guiyang in southwest China.

“In this way, we will be marrying the requirements of Chinese companies with the capabilities of Indian IT service providers,” said India's ambassador to China Gautam Bambawale. He told the Times of India: “We visualize that these initiatives will give a big impetus to cooperation between India and China in the IT-enabled services sector.”

According to NASSCOM, the pilot projects launched on the platform will be executed over the next year.

For India, getting access to China's IT market is important to address the massive trade deficit which has spiraled to over $51 billion. The Chinese IT market grew significantly in the last several years. The country is spending $5.5 billion on big data and analytics in 2018 alone.

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India has been demanding China provide market access to IT and pharmaceutical firms for several years. Its top tech firms have a big presence in China and the new platform is expected to provide a gateway for Indian IT-small and medium-sized enterprises. Last year, NASSCOM launched India's first IT hub in China in the port city of Dalian.

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