As part of its continuous efforts to evangelize IT development in newer geographies, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has entered into a partnership with Xuzhou city from Jiangsu Province in China to help develop an IT Corridor. In line with this collaboration, few local companies from Jiangsu province have pledged their support by signing as early adopters of this match-making platform.
The primary aim of this IT corridor will be to facilitate partnerships between Indian and Chinese companies. Xuzhou, as the center of the Huai Hai economic zone, is an important comprehensive national transportation hub and its proximity from major industrial & economic hub like Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Suzhou is within 3 hours travel by high speed train.
Through this partnership, the platform will be launched that will facilitate match-making between Indian companies wanting to collaborate with companies in Huai Hai economic zone looking to adopt digital transformation from verticals such as – manufacturing, retail, automotive, healthcare & utilities and help them create innovative product and solutions in the co-create mode. This partnership will help create more jobs in Xuzhou and India, facilitating talent transfer between the two countries.
Through its previous similar initiatives in China, NASSCOM has brought to the fore opportunities with over 300 companies where more than 10 Indian SME companies have signed deals worth 31 Million CNY ($4.5 million). The previous IT corridors in Dalian and Guiyang have already sprung up opportunities to the tune of 24 Million CNY ($4.6 million) and 62 Million CNY ($8.9 million) respectively. These two corridors have paved the way for cooperation in co-create mode in the emerging technologies such as AI, IoT and Analytics in the Chinese market.
Mayor of Xuzhou Municipal Govt stated “The signing of the “China-India (Xuzhou) IT Corridor Project” is an important measure for the Indian software and service industry associations to enter the Chinese market and seize the development opportunity of the Huaihai Economic Zone. It will also inject strong momentum into the development of the Xuzhou software service outsourcing industry. We sincerely hope that the Nasscom will bring its advantages on capital, talents and technology in accordance with the content of the agreement, to improve the construction, operation and development of the park, so as to build a world-class service outsourcing cooperation development platform. we hoped that the Tongshan District Committee, the district government and the relevant departments of the city will fully support the construction of the project, and work together to make the “IT Industry Corridor Project” become an IT industry demonstration project, and a new pivot for the cooperation in the software service industry between China and India.”
Commenting on the collaboration, Gagan Sabharwal, Senior Director, NASSCOM said, “This Corridor will help strengthen China India Digital Cooperation leveraging our respective strengths in hardware and software to build innovative products and solutions in Co-create mode. Given that this region is known for its manufacturing capabilities, we expect many collaborative case studies emerging from the Smart Manufacturing domain. This is the third collaboration after the Dalian & Guiyang Corridor and will further act as a building block towards strengthening the Indo-Chinese relationship and we are looking forward to more case studies emerging in the months ahead while we stimulate this ecosystem.”
Commenting during the launch, Shri Anil Kumar Rai, Consul General Shanghai said “China being a dominant manufacturing country requires software, IT and IT enabled services to transform towards smart manufacturing. IT Corridor at Xuzhou has potential to fill the critical institutional void of software support for small and medium size industries in their own language.”
Under the partnership/MoU both parties agree to setup local version of SIDCOP (Sino-Indian Digital Collaboration Plaza) platform that was first setup with city of Dalian and Guiyang that has online and offline presence and is implemented by Zeta V as the implementing agency. SIDCOP platform helps in a) Digital Transformation Adoption of local companies b) Facilitate language translation c) match-making between Indian and Chinese companies using AI based engine.
Founder of Zeta V, implementing agency of the Corridor, Mr Sujit Chatterjee said “We started the Indian IT Corridor journey early last year and we are encouraged by the wide acceptance of our online-offline integrated ecosystem approach in Dalian and Guiyang. As the Corridor operator, we are very excited to launch the third Corridor in Xuzhou and we look forward to bringing in latest technologies of digital transformation from NASSCOM members to benefit the local customer community in Jiangsu”
Xuzhou is the geographic and economic center of over 20 cities and in China’s regional economic layout, the city has slowly established itself as an industrial powerhouse. Several companies are setting up base in the city and now aim at digitally transforming the local industry. The city is a burgeoning talent pool with 14 colleges and provides nearly 50,000 college graduates and 300,000 skilled workers each year to meet the various labor demands. This will help the local companies to do their business in a more efficient manner. The inclusion of foreign talent will further build capabilities and create more jobs.
