India: How can India catch up with China in IT industry?

Well, I am a chinese, I'd like to share my points of view about chinese IT industry. The population is very large both in China and in India, which means there are a lot of clients and opportunities. Most Chinese IT guys want to make full use of this benifit. Many university students start their IT company to provide products to the market. In fact, it's not very hard to succeed in China in the IT industry, especially in the domain of software. in short, the market is open, competes are fierce and products are good. Another important fact is that the policy of Chinese government tend to protect national companies and reject foreign companies . IT giants like facebook, twitter and youtube are inaccessible in mainland China. We use Baidu instead of Google, we use Renren instead of facebook, we use weibo instead of twitter etc. The consequence is that chinese company are protected by the gov and can earn money from the large population. To be honest, I don't konw well about indian IT industry, but according to chinese media, India is a very big competitor in this area. I'm not sure whether I could answer your question but I wish you would know something about chinese IT industry.  ^^

I have dealt with many large Indian IT companies such as WIPRO, cognizant, Infosys, Tcs; worked with Indians offshore as well as on-site, project teams as well as contractors.  I also worked with a lot of chinese IT professionals, my friend from Amazon goes to China to recruit and train IT professionals and we have in depth discussions on this topic. First of all, chinese IT revenue is largely converted through manufacturing, marketing and sales.  China is the manufacturing center of the world, so computer parts, tablets, phones, would all be considered IT hardware, and this revenue covers a huge percentage for the whole world.  Secondly, China overall has progressed more than India in terms of pulling people out of poverty, thus China has more consumers to put into the economy. Third, the Chinese government focuses on infrastructure much more than the Indian government, thus many more chinese are online and are spending online, so those revenue goes into IT; online sale is considered IT revenue while sale in store is not, marketing revenue as well. So revenue its not a good judgement for who is more advanced in IT.  If you have dealt with the same work load in China and India, you'd know that it is much cheaper to build a website in India than China, because IT professional infrastructure and training is more robust there (while consumer IT infra is more robust in China).  There is one thing chinese have over India in the professional arena, is that the method of understanding the problem (similar to front end customer service), requirement gathering if you will, is more robust and it may be cultural. What we find is that if you give work to an Indian person, many times they'll go do the work come back and present a product that is not what we want, so they keep changing it until they get it right. You give the same work to a chinese person, he/she will ask you lots of questions before working, then hours of and come back with what we want but takes much longer time, and its so badly designed that every change will literally be easier if they had to rewrite the program. I'm exaggerating a little bit to give you a distinction but it's not really that much of an exaggeration. In short, chinese consumer IT is more advanced,I.e. more people adopts and utilize and create things in consumer technology.  India are more advanced in professional IT side, with training centers, centers of excellence that maintain knowledge within the companies.

India and China are at different development levels. India's IT industry is out-sourcing based and out-sourcing driven. India does not have a big enough domestic market for softwares or internet products. Chinese software industry is not as developed as India because making softwares in China is not lucrative and English is not widely used in China. However, China does have a booming internet industry. Giants like Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, 360, Sohu, Netease, Sina, Renren and Youku Tudou are not seen in India. There are also hundreds of smaller internet companies in China that focus on niche markets with millions of users such as Douban, YY, Xiami and Momo. Chinese internet businesses could flourish because most of Chinese populations are better-off than Indian populations. We could afford smart-phones and computers and many other things required for wide-spread internet innovation. As for hardware, since China is the world factory, nearly all cell-phone and computer manufacturers established their factory bases in China. It is natural China is doing better than India. For India to catch up with China, it first needs to create a domestic market for softwares and internet products. India has a huge population, with the right personal income level, it could be very easy for internet companies to succeed on domestic market. As for hardware industry, Indian government needs to take steps to build better infrastructures and full-fledged industrial clusters to lure global brands. I noticed Xiaomi from China announced it will build factories in India and Foxcon is going to hire tens of hundres of Indian workers. If all the current "Make-in-India" promises materializes, Indian hardware industry could catch up with China in less than 10 years.

One thing to note is that India's IT industry is largely outsourced from other countries.  Companies in other parts of the world use India as their development center.  When things are outsourced, much of the value of the sale stays in the home country. Also things in India cost less than in China.  So while the dollar figures might seem very different, the amount of work done in each country is probably much more similar.

1. China is not good at IT. Their IT enterprises are just OK for the factories to run. 2. China is world leader in manufacturing. 3. India needs to catch up with China in manufacturing. For that, 1. Create subsidized SEZ's for manufacturing industries. just like they did for IT industry. 2. Provide blue collar workforce and training. Indian IT industry has one major flaw despite being one of the worlds largest - No products. All Indian IT industry does is act as service providers for American and European IT companies which actually create and sell products. China doesn't even have that. They have a hand full of IT companies that are basically having a single task. Copy and create a Chinese version of all successful global IT products. You name it, whats app, google, etc have equivalent Chinese counterparts. But they don't work outside china and these global products are banned within China. Coming back to Indian IT industry, unless they go up the value chain, they will loose relevance in a pretty short time. The services market is nearing its saturation and they need to go for products to grow.

India’s IT industry is largely service based. Which means one of the following:1) They will maintain large IT applications: Suppose there is a large bank in the US. The Indian IT service provider, will then supply about 1000 to 5000 developers/ testers/ architects, to build, test and maintain there complete bank software solution.Note: These kinds of services have some limit in terms of making turnover per developer, as the company in the US will negotiate in terms of cost per developer or some similar metric.2) They will support IT teams globally: Suppose there is a medium sized IT company in France. They will hire a team of developers in India, so as to support their software development activities. (Photo: http://Flickr.com / https://www.flickr.com/photos/praveenpn4u/3325599530/in/photolist-64SySW-aYLkmz-3rqvb1-4nMmv5-3zm4bp-qzae2J-ecWrYM-fHN7nD-id5jTk-dWoYj3-i2EzH6-qz9n5Y-8NcLjt-8BDdf1-bxzn1H-49eeGq-8MRTSr-s91nKi-8NfUzE-8LKdnB-owWfen-fCgfRU-9kwJ1z-ajJCg7-8xe84h-9Bga47-9b1wuz-aJKsn-qZDEGg-8vKts1-dCHeeG-7nggzS-9jniEv-k7FPFD-8Kjxzx-cbtyFj-8NfTwo-asraK-qjPik9-8KpUjL-8K3zw4-9WSzGC-ruzR3R-f7KRML-f7KR4h-qRGkuY-7Jo58b-p4TuPx-949CkU-b67mv4 / Praveen)3) They will build software products for western companies: You will find a lot of western companies in India, who have development centers for various kinds of software products. They will let the software product be build in India and they will market that software in their country.4) They will support small web agencies: Another focus you can often see in India, is small IT outsourcing companies, which will support small web agencies in western countries.So what you can see is the following: Most of the services offered by Indian IT companies are very much linear in growth. If you want to make more turnover in these kind of businesses, then you need to hire more people. So that is also why you will find hundreds of thousands of developers in companies like TCS or Infosys. TCS in fact employees more than 350′000 employees, most of which are software developers. But their turn over is “just” 16 billion US Dollars.Compare that to the revenue of SAP, a German software company, which builds ERP products. They have “just” 76′986 employees and have a turn over of around 22 billion US Dollars. So they make more turn over than TCS with just about one fifth of their employee base. This is called non-linear growth.The same non-linear growth can be seen with Chinese companies (Photo: http://www.flickr.com / https://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginecup/9241106546/in/photolist-f5B62d-5dzQ3p-5dzJQv-5dEhx5-f5mQTK-jt3mSX-5dE8Go-5dE9cb-67MrFn-f9tEJG-5dEkeS-5dzYbR-8vtyRx-eb5B1K-f9tFMJ-huzhMv-8vtJRX-eb5B52-5s5MSV-8vwmGJ-huA3B3-8ztJ5W-rqUzy1-5dEg6Y-5dEgCh-5dEdj1-5dE4E5-5dEa3s-bZaLZQ-5dA1iv-5dEig1-5dEkMh-5dE6my-5dEh23-5dzV3H-5dzTPr-74bH8q-5dEaiw-7PN1zd-h3zpJF-cE8fFw-5dzYA8-ofrxoa-5dE8uA-5dE6PL-831i6Q-5dEbdY-vSkmqs-huA2Ub-5dzHtR / ImagineCup)A similar non-linear growth can be seen with Chinese companies. They produce some hardware products, most of which need some kind of software nowadays. So you see IT companies having more revenue. But, the software industry is largely manufacturing driven. That is why I would say, that you cannot really compare the Chinese software industry with the Indian one.Developments in the futureWhat you can see in India nowadays, is that young people are more and more drawn into software product development. So in a few years time you will see more and more multi-billion software product companies (at least in valuation terms).But of course, China is not to be underestimated. They have a large, well educated population. There is no doubt, that the Chinese IT industry, when it comes to the number of developers, will become much higher than today.So my conclusion is: It is very difficult to compare China with IndiaThe Chinese economy has already developed into an manufacturing hub for the world, whereas India is more of a service oriented provider for the world.I would also say that China has somewhat of a head start. Because China started their strong economic growth (in my opinion) about 20 years ago. Whereas India is growing strongly only in the last 5 to 10 years.It is also important that there should be no rivalry between China and India. Both should see each other as partners for a better future.Kind RegardsSascha ThattilCEO and Project Manager at http://www.software-developer-india.com

As many other writers described that Google, FB etc. are banned in China, so this factor give them a plus point for encouraging domestic websites.Other point is that, most of electronic devices like mobile phones, laptop are manufactured in China. So, China is manufacture hub of hardware for this industry.Internet users in China are 721,434,547 while in India the figure is 462,124,989. Please zoom the image and analyze it. Source - http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/China have better infrastructure.So, answer for your question is We are in good position in terms of Software. So, whatever we have to do is to encourage hardware manufacturing sector. (Software will not need any encouragement.) For, hardware production in India, we need to change some policies. As we know, ease of doing business in India is very bad. So, once the setting of industry and other clearance work will be easy for common man, people will be encouraged to set of production companies. We can see that, in India, per day, more and more people are using Smartphones or internet. So, the future is better. From the above image we can say that, 30% increase per year is there in internet users. So, there is huge chance of domestic market. Till now, we are exporting most of software products, but now, the demand in domestic will be higher. So, we have to catch this opportunity and identify the domestic needs and have to be advance in making softwares according to domestic needs. E.g. 55% of people in India are related with agriculture. So, a good app in related to this sector may make that app compete with any international giant. If the aim of Digital India, Skill India and Make in India is achieved than there will be huge benefit. The government should encourage people for using more internet based services, and saving time and paper. For this, cuber security, trust in online process and knowledge in online activities is main concern. We can see that, from some years, government and other related agencies. also started doing their activities online and they are good in that. E.g. Public grievance, Online Form filling for exams, Banking and many more. So, this trend will continue in future and will attract more people because of the easiness. Well, these are my views. can be wrong or right. please correct me.(if so)

Build a great firewall of India…seriously, not kidding. GFW of China is more than censorship. It's a wall of econimical protection…sad but true.

Well, a good question. First of all, Black money should be retrieved. Because, without the large amount of money , the interest rate will not go down. As a result, many entrepreneur can't start a business or become bankrupt due to high interest rates. Indian IT industries should increase their quality of products and publicize and earn faith of companies. Every company need good quality product in a limited budget. China has banned google, facebook, twitter. In India, no political leaders can ban these sites, otherwise they are going to lose in the next election. The main thing is to take significant steps to stop brain drain.