Indian Chinese IT firms brainstorm over collaboration in China

About 50 leading Chinese IT firms on Friday brainstormed with top Indian software companies at a symposium on how China can make use of India's IT prowess in its big push to transform the world's second largest economy heavily dependent on manufacturing sector to services. The symposium, the first of the stakeholders and companies from both sides, was organised in Nanjing jointly by NASSCOM, the premier association of IT of India, Indian Consulate of Shanghai along with Nanjing Municipal People's government.

Indian officials say Nanjing was chosen for the event as 76 per cent of China's IT industry is located in the eastern part of the country. The objective of the 'IT Forum' was to explore collaborative opportunities between Chinese manufacturers and Indian IT industry, in particular in the Internet of Things (IOT) domain, a statement from the Indian Consulate in Shanghai said.

While aggressively courting for Chinese investments in 'Make in India' programme, Indian government and the IT industry also have been making strong pitch in the past few years for bigger opening in Chinese burgeoning IT sector, specially in the state-owned companies as they moved into high tech gadgets like robotics.

In the last few years, India has been making out a case for China that a much wider opening for Indian IT would besides helping transformation of Chinese economy from manufacturing to services also boost sagging Indian exports to China. China's services sector is rapidly picking as the country moved away from manufacturing due to decline in exports. The balance in over $70 billion bilateral trade between Indian-China is heavily tilted in favour of Beijing with last year the trade deficit mounting to over $51 billion.

India sees IT and Pharmaceuticals, two of India's major strengths could help the world's second largest economy as India has established global leadership in both the sectors.

Indian officials say that the participation of the Chinese government in jointly organising the symposium in which China's leading IT firms actively took part showed Beijing's interest in roping in Indian IT firms' services for the development of its IT sector.

Consul General of India in Shanghai Prakash Gupta led the Indian delegation and addressed the opening session at the symposium and called for greater collaborative opportunities between Indian and Chinese companies in the IT and IT Enabled Services (ITES) sector. He said Chinese companies should take advantage of the opportunities available due to the ongoing 'Make in India' initiative. 

Vice Mayor of Nanjing Municipal government Xie ZhiZheng in his address welcomed Indian IT companies' participation in collaborative ventures in the Chinese market. Chinese companies are very good in manufacturing and India has the software prowess and when the two combine, a natural win win situation is created for both Indian and Chinese companies to collaborate and come up with world-class products, in particular in Internet of Things (IoT) domain, said Gagan Sabharwal, Director, Global Trade Development, NASSCOM.