“There is a Need for Greater Chinese Investment in Indian Startups” – Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Ayog

Addressing India, China businesses at the Chindia Dialogue 2018, Niti Ayog CEO, Amitabh Kant invited more Chinese Investment in India, and said that from the 17th largest investor, it should become the 1st.
He also said, “There is a need for greater Chinese investment. We have over 100 Chinese companies but still should increase. The Chinese companies should catch up in terms of investing more in India. China remains the 17th largest investor in India, and should become the 1st. So instead of exporting we would like Chinese companies to invest in India. $3.7 Bn invested in India by China in the last 3 years. 15% investment in Indian startups is from china and we would like it to increase. Major investment from China has happened in 25 startups.”
“India has the 2nd biggest startup ecosystem, and we are nearly 4,500 tech startups and the number should reach 12,000 by 2020. We need a lot of scale up funding. We have tried to develop an ecosystem that is conducive to growth of startups, and our startup schemes have promoted innovation,” he further mentioned.
He also said that Last year close to $13.7 Bn were invested across 620 deals, this is much higher than what India received in 2014-15. Finance, consumer internet, healthcare, Food & Beverage, Edtech and SAAS are the top areas of investment. Apart from big cities, deals have happened in tier 2 cities also. Indian market is very similar to China in terms of scale and complexity.
India-China bilateral trade was valued at $84.44 billion in 2017. Also, in the past year, Chinese companies invested about $2 billion in India as compared to $700 million in 2016, tripling the funding in a single year. Leveraging the Chinese ecosystem with the help of investors is turning out to be a game-changer in terms of knowledge sharing and not just sourcing capital. Since China and India have remarkable similarities in terms of consumer spending behaviour, on the market-scale it is the China model that Indian entrepreneurs are finding success and depend on. Given the recent success of investments, FDI from China could potentially grow by 4-5 times in the next five years and Chinese companies could very soon become one of India’s top foreign direct investors.
Giving a big boost to the startup ecosystem, the third edition of “Chindia TMT Dialogue 2018′, the annual conference was organized today in New Delhi, by Draphant.