Not US, China internet giants winning over thriving Indian market

Rising aspiration in the world’s second most populous country is driving demand in almost all the sectors from electronics to internet market, attracting developed markets to invest in the country.

Looking at India’s growing market, which is predicted to grow by 2.5 times by 2020, companies from the world over are investing and eager to invest in India.

There are around 465 million Internet users in 2017, according to IAMAI report. According to projections by a US government agency, India is well poised to become the third-largest economy by 2030, surpassing four developed nations Japan, Germany, Britain and France.

World top economy, the US, has invested more than $15 billion in the past year and a half and its firms like Amazon and Uber too have shown commitment to invest billion dollars in the country.

That’s just the beginning. More than the US, second largest economy in the world, China is betting big to win Indian market rather than going West. After winning its domestic market, China’s tech companies are pushing their boundaries and creating waves in other countries.

All the big successful firms of China such as, Baidu (search), Alibaba (e-commerce) and Tencent (instant messaging and gaming) are bullish about India and already doing core businesses in the country.

Presently, Alibaba group has invested in India’s major e-commerce businesses, most famous among these being Paytm. Alibaba and its payments affiliate Ant Financial hold more than 40 percent stake in One97, Paytm’s parent company. Alibaba and Paytm Mall together are also in talks with Bigbasket for picking up stake in online grocery segment.

Whereas, Baidu, sixth largest search engine, is reportedly expected to invest in Indian e-commerce startups including, Zomato, BookMyShow, and Bigbasket.

Another production firm, UC browser in short span of time has consolidated its position in India. Being in the Indian market form 2008, Its market share has risen to 41.76 percent out running Google Chrome, notes StatCounter report.

The UC browser made it to the list of the top ten-most downloaded apps in India, ranking at the sixth position with WhatsApp at the first, followed by Facebook Messenger. A Chinese beautifying app, “Beauty Plus”, developed by Meitu has become a rage among the selfie-obsessed population in India.

Mobo Market app, which is China’s version of Google Play Store, is getting a good response from India and it is promoting its applications in full swing and adding features specific supporting multiple Indian languages including Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, and Tamil, which are in testing phase.

On the other hand, SHAREit, the mobile sharing application has over 30 crore users from India. It also bagged the third position in the Top 10-most downloaded apps on Google Play in 2017.

In messaging space, China's Wechat, backed by Tencent, has invested in Hike messenger. This's not all as there are many future business talks involving investment between India and China are in process.

How this will shape up the future of both the countries, as there is ongoing Doklam border standoff, only time can tell.