China should do more investment in India than focussing on exports here: Kant

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant Friday urged the Chinese firms to raise their funding in Indian start-ups and said instead of focusing on exports to India they should look for raising their investments. The Chinese companies should catch up in terms of investing more in India, he said. 

"China remains the 17th largest investor in India's start-ups and should become the first largest (investor). So instead of exporting, we would like Chinese companies to invest in India," Kant said at the third edition of the Chindia TMT Dialogue 2018 here.

He said there is a lot in common between the Chinese and the Indian startup firms and India has a lot to learn from China. Kant said as much as 15 per cent investment in Indian start-up firms is from China and India would like to see it rising. The major investment from China (in start-ups) has happened in 25 start-ups, he said.

"India has the world's second best start-up ecosystem and we are nearly 4,200 tech start-ups 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 start-ups, and our start-up schemes have promoted innovation," Kant said. Finance, consumer internet, healthcare, food and beverages, Edtech and SaaS (Software as a Service) are the top areas of investment where the Chinese companies make their investment here, he added. 

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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, said the NITI Aayog CEO. "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," he added.