'Trust deficit in India-China technology collaboration'

Deep differences and lack of trust between Indian and Chinese technologies remain major hurdles in collaboration between technology-heavyweights of the two countries, an industry expert said here Thursday.

"There are multiple factors which will be impacting the speed of adaption. Most important factor will be the trust issues, which are traditionally associated with Chinese service providers in India," said Deep Singhania, founder of AugmentSol Advisory and Consultancy Pte Ltd.

Alibaba's India plans are exciting from an industry viewpoint, but the mega group will face challenges in scaling up as per its ambitious targets in the Indian market, according to Singhania, a technology veteran who attended Alibaba Cloud Summit here Thursday.

Global sentiments are getting impacted because of US-Huawei ongoing saga. Whether it is going to increase or weather down, only time will tell, Singhania noted.

"Entrusting your business-critical data in Alibaba cloud will be a leap of faith which I believe will begin slowly. They will also be facing strong competition from established players like Amazon Web Services (AWS) which reported three-fold growth to USD 150+ million for fiscal 2018," Singhania added.

Singhania's comments came as Alibaba presented global plans for introducing its new products and platforms, including India where it is building a presence.

Likewise, Indian technology groups are also expanding their service portfolio along with industry majors Amazon and Azure but they do face a slower progress in the mega Chinese market, he added.

"Nevertheless, growth of Alibaba cloud needs to be seen closely," he felt.

But he was quick to add: "There can be little chances of collaboration between China and India on cloud technologies, as India traditionally has believed in partnering with the US and European tech companies".

China had been trying to increase foothold in India tech market by making large investments like in PayTM and others. Indian cloud market is set to cross USD 7 billion by 2022 as per Industry body Nasscom.

"This journey of Alibaba's growth in India will be an interesting one," according to Singhania.