NASSCOM signs agreement with local Chinese govt to push for AI

India's premier IT industry body today signed a major agreement with an influential local Chinese government to provide a head start for Indian firms in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things.
The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), India's premier trade body for IT-BPM companies, signed a framework agreement with Dalian Municipal People's Government, allowing more Indian companies to penetrate into huge Chinese software market.
Dalian houses China's most high tech manufacturing firms specialising in ship building, automotive and chemical industries.
The agreement was signed at Dalian on the sidelines of the first India-China Dalian Internet of Things (IoT) Conference aimed at exploring opportunities for better alliances between Indian and Chinese companies.

The day-long event was attended by over 50 delegates from the Chinese industry along with the Mayor of Dalian, Xiao Shengfeng and 30 Indian delegates led by Joint Secretary, Department of Commerce Sudhanshu Pandey.
"India leads the world in software with great foundation of IT and BPO services," Xiao said.

He said the conference serves as a platform for the upgrading of industries of Dalian which will drive the integration of advanced IT industry of India and the strong manufacturing industry of Dalian.
"We hope that the two sides will take good advantage of this conference to strengthen communication, increase understanding, promote cooperation between Indian IT enterprises and Dalian manufacturing enterprises to achieve prosperous results in areas of IoT, smart equipment manufacturing and Big Data Analysis," Xiao was quoted as saying by the NASSCOM press release.

Pandey called for greater collaborative opportunities between Indian and Chinese companies in the IT and IT Enabled Services(ITES) sector and encouraged Chinese companies to take advantage of the opportunities available as part of the ongoing 'Make in India' initiative.
The agreement is the best option to make inroads into China's IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) markets after failing to get a major market share in IT, Gagan Sabharwal, Senior Director, Global Trade Development, NASSCOM said.
"This will be the best option. Traditionally Indian business have not been making much headway with respect from revenues from IT but our endeavour now is instead of going in customer and vendor relationship, we are now moving into a partnership model, where we suggest companies from the hardware and manufacturing side who want to make their solutions smarter," he told PTI in an interview from Dalian.

"Any manufacturing firm unless they make their products smarter they will be kicked out of business. China is number one in manufacturing and by partnering with India's software firms they can ride the market wave and can still be competitive and meaningful globally," he said.
The underlying theme is India should leverage its respective capabilities - manufacturing on Chinese side and software and analytics on Indian side to co-develop and co- create for the global market.
This well help penetrate China market in a "much better way," he said.
"We are already seeing some traction. We are trying this model with some of Chinese provinces like Guizhou. Dalian has much better echo system to deal with as they have the size, scale, they have big companies on manufacturing side. So that way it has much larger echo system for which our companies gets exposed to," he said.

"We met 30 Chinese companies and all echoed that we need to partner with companies who are meaningful in completion. Otherwise will be kicked out," he said.