China firms showing interest in Indian start-ups, says Chinese media

Beijing, Nov 20: More and more Chinese investors are feeling interested in Indian start-ups as was evident from the fact that more than 350 representatives of leading Chinese venture capital (VC) companies took part in an India investment seminar held here on Tuesday, November 20.

According to China's Global Times, around 20 Indian start-ups emerging from various sectors like travel, food, shopping/marketing and rental solutions made pitches before investors from China, as per a press release from the Indian Embassy in China.

"Chinese investors have been increasingly active in India in recent years," the Global Times report quoted Liu Xiaoxue, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' National Institute of International Strategy, as saying.

"Chinese investors see the country as a benchmark destination, where development in many industries is moving at or near the same pace as in China."

Liu said as the world's second largest investor, China could not afford to ignore India and that Chinese firms might even have to compete with top enterprises from other countries on the Indian soil.

The report said at the end of 2017, Chinese investment into India was worth more than $8 million for India "become an important market for infrastructure cooperation among Chinese companies and a major investment destination, data from China's Ministry of Commerce showed".

"Much Chinese venture capital has been going to India for a long time, and some Chinese companies established research and development departments in India long ago, employing many Indian researchers and engineers," the report quoted Zhao Gancheng, director of the South Asia Studies Department at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, as saying.