How Chinese companies are hunting in packs on Indian soil

Chinese companies are not only partnering local firms to overcome cultural barriers but also collaborating with one another to grow their user bases in world markets. Photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald.

Until a couple of years ago, Chinese startups were little known in India but are familiar names now. The best known in the world’s fastest growing smartphone market are of course the smartphone makers like Xiaomi and Lenovo. Alibaba and Tencent have made waves more recently with their mega investments in Indian startups Paytm and Practo. But it’s the Android utility app makers like APUS and Cheetah who have notched up the most users in a country where 90 percent of smartphones run on Android.

APUS, for example, says it already has 45 million users in India for its range of Android apps, including a launcher, booster, and browser designed for low bandwidth use. It also has a US$45 million fund to invest in Indian startups and a partnership with Indian mobile ad platform InMobi to increase its footprint in India.

“The domestic market [in China] is like a red hot sea. It is too competitive. Foreign markets, though, are a vast blue ocean,” says Tao Li, founder and CEO of APUS.

Photo credit: AK Rockefeller on Flickr.

The drive to go overseas comes at a stage when Chinese internet companies have built up the size, resources, and maturity to make a success of it. And yet, they face challenges in cultural adaptation and language barriers.

One way to overcome these is to find suitable local partners to get a foothold in the market, as APUS did with InMobi and Xiaomi did by selling its phones on Flipkart initially. Alibaba too chose to invest in Snapdeal and Paytm first instead of going head-to-head straightaway with Amazon in India.

What’s even more interesting though is the collaboration between Chinese tech companies, which know one another well, to conquer world markets.

Chinese companies playing cricket

In India, for example, APUS and rising smartphone brand Huawei joined hands recently to target fans of a game the Chinese know little about: cricket. Nevertheless, APUS launched a simple mobile game on its Discovery app to target cricket-crazy Indians during the ongoing T20 World Cup tournament in the country. Users play a short online cricket game and post the screenshot of their final score on the APUS Facebook page (after ‘liking’ it). Winners of this contest get the newly launched Huawei Honor 5X phone. Nearly two million fans have already participated in this game.

It’s a win-win for APUS, which now has over 4 million ‘likes’ on Facebook, and Huawei, which is gaining massive exposure among the millions of youth who are addicted to cricket in India and are also among the heaviest users of smartphones. APUS had a similar collaboration with another Chinese smartphone maker Meizu on Valentine’s Day, and with Lenovo on Holi, the Indian festival of colors.

A new phase on the horizon