Nasscom hosts first ever India-China IT Summit

In a first ever IT gathering in China hosted by Nasscom, both countries discussed possible areas of co-operation in the area of information technology. The landmark event was inaugurated by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Shanghai. Delivering the inaugural address at the summit, Vajpayee said, “If our economic cooperation is to break out of the traditional mould, knowledge-based technologies need to occupy a far more prominent position in our economic interactions.”

Vajpayee reiterated that the two countries need to work together to share experiences in spreading IT education and in initiating community level low-cost computing, home networking solutions, more efficient use of bandwidth and e-marketing.

Vajpayee also called on the Chinese government to partner with India on providing the required IT solutions for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. He proposed a joint institutional mechanism between the two governments to work out modalities for this.

Som Mittal, chairman, Nasscom said, “Chinese companies are still evolving project management and domain skills, which offers potential opportunity for Indian IT companies to enter into joint ventures with Chinese IT companies. This will also provide an opportunity to serve MNC customers of Indian companies who are operating in the Chinese IT market. Further, India can engage with China to enhance its manufacturing base and encourage local integration of hardware products. This will help bring down the cost significantly and help domestic players, especially SMEs to provide shorter sales cycles and faster local availability.”

Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom said, “While India and China are amongst the largest and the fastest growing markets for ICT in the region, trade between the two countries is nominal. India, for instance, only exports $4.3 million worth of software to China. Indian companies can tap the Chinese domestic software market; leverage Chinese talent in the area of chip design and telecommunications technology and set up offshore development centres in China to serve the Japanese market. Likewise, the Chinese can tap Indian potential in software services to their advantage.”

Vajpayee also underlined during the summit that the respective core competencies of China and India, in hardware and software, provided a natural ground for an effective alliance in the IT industry.