At the invitation of Jack Ma, the founder and Board Director of Alibaba Group and Chairman of General Association of Zhejiang Entrepreneurs (GAZE), Consul General Anil Kumar Rai addressed a gathering of over 2,500 entrepreneurs hailing from the Zhejiang Province. The topic of discussion was “Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Opportunities for Chinese companies abroad”. 

2.  Speaking on the occasion CG highlighted the important steps taken to create business friendly environment. He emphasized that efforts made by the Government India in last three years particularly through tax reforms, scrapping of our 1200 redundant laws and simplifications of 87 FDI rules had resulted in significant jump from 130th to 100th place in World Bank’s Doing Business Report, and added that Government of India to continue to make best endeavors with an aim to reach among the top 50 countries in the terms of ease of doing business.

3.  Adding further CG said that the sweeping reforms carried by India have been noted by the entrepreneurs from China and across the world.  He mentioned that because of the concerted efforts to improve, innovation and develop entrepreneurial skills, India had become the third largest startup ecosystem where around 5200 startups are working on different projects; and that  the availability of large pool of trained and well qualified manpower,  vast market size, and a youthful demography was  attracting the  best and the biggest from the world to India. 

4.  While highlighting the major areas of interest for Chinese start-ups in India, Consul General indicated that India is going to be among the first few countries to adopt 5G technology by 2020 which has created a new window of innovation and startup opportunity for the telecom IT and Fintech companies. In addition, the rolling out of Bharat Net 2 which aims to provide broadband high speed connectivity to all villages by March 2019 is expected to trigger massive service sector revolution. This project aims to provide high speed, high quality internet connectivity to over 500 million rural populations and help them to connect in the mainstream of economic and trade activities which in turn would open up huge e-commerce opportunities for startups to penetrate into the rural areas which are relatively unexplored.

5.  Consul General extended the open invitation given by the Honorable Prime Minister of India during the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017, Hyderabad to all entrepreneurs and invited them to “Make in India, Invest in India, for India and the World” and assured the wholehearted support in this process. 

6.  Speaking on the success stories of the Chinese companies in India, Consul General highlighted that companies like Xiaomi, a smartphone company had in no time became a major brand in India. Given the enormous growth potential Xiaomi is encouraging its vendors and suppliers to move their production and R&D facilities to India. In addition, Xiaomi has decided to invest over $ 1 billion in 100 startups in India. Similarly, companies like Alibaba Group, Oppo, Vivo, ZTE and many other companies are seriously looking bullish due to renewed opportunities and ever improving business opportunities in India. 

7.  Consul General invited the entrepreneurs to look for investment and innovation opportunities in all sectors of economy.

Hangzhou

29.11.2017