Explain with examples, how MNCs can leverage China and India as global platforms. Do you agree that China and India offer similar advantages for MNCs in this context?

$****$Leveraging China and India as global platforms

In $2013,$ President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative $($BRI$)$ with the goal of boosting China$$s road and maritime connectivity with the rest of the world, most notably Asia and Eastern Europe. By some estimates, BRI could mean a capital investment of around US$$1$ trillion over $20$ years. Companies such as GE and Honeywell are looking at the BRI as a potential opportunity to leverage their strengths in China and partnerships with Chinese companies to grow their business in the BRI countries.

India is playing a different kind of platform role. Unlike China, the Indian government makes the country far more open to foreign multinationals and does not pursue a my$-$market$-$for$-$your$-$technology policy. As a direct result, most of the world$$s technology giants prefer to do leading$-$edge R&D work in their Indian, rather than Chinese, labs. Google has its second largest R&D lab in the world $$ after Silicon Valley $$ in India. This is true also of other technology giants, such as IBM, SAP, Adobe and Texas Instruments. Google and Facebook look at India as the ideal platform for the development of internet services that would work well with low$-$end smartphones, slow bandwidth speeds, and be extremely affordable. Once developed for India, these solutions can then be rolled out to other emerging markets.

Something similar is also playing out in the automobile sector. Companies such as Ford, Hyundai, and the Renault$-$Nissan$-$Mitsubishi Alliance now use India as the launchpad for the development and marketing of cars aimed specifically at emerging markets. The logic is that success in India can be cloned easily in other emerging markets.

Asia beckons

Asia$$s GDP today is $50\%$ larger than either the US or Europe. By $2025,$ it could be bigger than the US and Europe combined. Asia will still be growing faster than any other region of the world. Asia is also becoming internally more integrated $$ by trade as well as investment linkages. Thus, becoming smart and serious about Asia is a strategic imperative, not an option.

There exist massive and growing opportunities to benefit from the large markets for almost everything in Asia. In addition, China and India offer the potential to serve as global platforms to enter and succeed in markets outside Asia.

Two of the key requirements for success in Asia include making Asia your second home, and learning to make sense of the world, not just through Western, but also Asian, eyes.