Speech by CG during the Event on China-India IT Corridor, Xuzhou

[8 March 2019 at 1000 hrs]

Mr. Zhuang Zhaolin, Hon’ble Mayor of Xuzhou,

Mr. Xu Donghai, Hon’ble Vice Mayor of Xuzhou,

Mr.Gagan Sabharwal, Senior Director of NASSCOM,

Distinguished Participants witnessing today’s historic moment of the launch of China-India IT Corridor, Xuzhou,

Ladies and Gentleman,

Namaskar, JaoshangHao, Good Morning to all of you!!

I am extremely happy to be amongst all of you at this historic moment where NASSCOM and the Municipal Government of Xuzhou is going to enter in partnership agreement for establishment of third information technology corridor in China at this important city of Xuzhou. The focus of this partnership will be towards addressing the IT and ITES needs of the industries like manufacturing, retail, automotive, health care, utilities based in the Eastern China Region.

A growing share of manufacturing and services industry is no longer have option of staying in isolation but need to integrate IT and ITES to remain relevant in the competitive market of the future. Therefore, the new trend is IT based servicification of all aspects of economic activity. Although the big companies have been availing IT based services but the medium and small enterprises have been largely left out of this opportunity, leading them to a disadvantageous position.

The China-India IT Corridor, Xuzhou aims to fill the institutional void by reaching out to the medium and small enterprises in providing world class business process management, intelligent manufacturing, software support etc. to make them competitive and cope up with the challenges of the future. The other aspect of this initiative is to localise the services at a competitive price, in accordance to the needs of the Chinese enterprises, based out of Eastern China Region.

However, the success of this initiative largely depends on the extent of market access provided by the local as well as provincial governments of the Eastern China Region. A better market access to Indian software companies would enable the government’s and state owned enterprises to get world class IT, ITES facilities, business process management services to enhance their efficiency, efficacy and outreach.

We also expect the government to give national treatment in all aspects of economic activities including of providing equal footing in procurement of servicesto the Indian software companies which are going to partner in the China-India IT Corridor, Xuzhou. This is one of the well-established rule based WTO normswhich has found repeated mention in the speeches of the highest leadership and policymakers of China as part of its commitment towards opening and reforms process.

Let me briefly touch upon the Indian IT sector:

The IT industry contributes 7.7 % of India’s GDP and employs over 4 million people;

The IT industry is also growth centre for over 5,500 start ups in India;

India is the leading sourcing destination across the world accounting for 55% of market share of the Global Service Sourcing Business which amounts to US$185 billion;

India produces high quality talent pool in the IT and ITES; this trend is expected to remain robust for decades to come;

Although we have a strong presence of large size IT companies but we also have over15,000 small players focussing on niche areas in various verticals of manufacturing and service industry. These small players are highly innovative and has strong potential to come up with new and disruptive technologies such as cloud computing, social media and data analysis, platform based business process management services and creation of intellectual property;

The Indian IT market is experiencing a significant shift from few large sized deals towards addressing the IT needs of the smallest enterprises through adoption of innovative methodologies.

The effort of NASSCOM and its experienced partner company Zeta V led by two bright and experienced IT professionals Mr.Sujit Chatterjee and Mr.Rangarajan Vellamore is to bring best IT and ITES to the customers of the Eastern China Region.

Today we are going to witness signing of early adopter’s agreement where 3 Indians companies: Prameatrics, Sensar and Arc Soft / 3 Chinese Companies have committed to cooperate to kickstart the Commercial operation of IT software services.

I wish a great success to this initiative and convey my heartfelt thanks to the government of Xuzhou and its leadership for their initiative.

*****