Chinese smartphone manufacturers find India’s telecom market the best bet

A boom in India’s smartphone market, combined with the ‘Make in India’ initiative, has seen a surge in Chinese investments flowing into India’s telecom sector — an estimated $6.4 billion over the last five years. In all, commerce ministry officials estimate that China invested $8 billion in India since the turn of the century, with about 80 per cent of that in the last five years.

“The Chinese realised early that we had problems with mere imports, which were costing us hard currency. Having followed a similar regime of import substitution at home and having carefully studied the Japanese who follow up export of goods with export of capital, Chinese firms like Huawei and Xiaomi have started investing in factories here,” said officials.