Indian IT apex body Nasscom on Friday said it has entered into a partnership with Xuzhou city in Jiangsu province to develop an IT corridor in eastern China.

"The partnership with Xuzhou is to help develop the software market and build the third IT corridor in Xuzhou after Dalian and Guiyang in the eastern China region," the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) said in a statement here.

The new corridor will facilitate partnerships between Indian and Chinese firms as part of Nasscom's efforts to evangelise IT development in newer geographies.

As the centre of the Huai Hai economic zone, Xuzhou is an important national transportation hub. One can reach major industrial and economic hubs like Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Suzhou within three hours by high speed train.

"Through the partnership, the platform will enable match-making between Indian firms and their counterparts in the Huai Hai economic zone, looking to adopt digital transformation from verticals such as manufacturing, retail, automotive, healthcare and utilities," said the statement.

"The partnership will create more jobs in Xuzhou and India, facilitating talent transfer between the two countries," it said.

The apex body had created opportunities for 300 Chinese firms in the region, where 10 Indian small and medium enterprise (SEMs) signed deals valued at $4.5 million (Rs 315 crore).

Initiatives in the first two IT corridors led to the investment of $4.6 million (Rs 322 crore) in Dalian and $8.9 million (623 crore) in Guiyang.

The two corridors paved the way for cooperation in emerging technologies such as AI, IoT and Analytics in the Chinese market.

The China-India (Xuzhou) IT corridor project is an important step for the Indian software and service industry to enter "our market and seize the development opportunity of the Huai-hai Economic Zone", said Xuzhou Municipal government Mayor Zhou Tiegen.

The corridor will inject momentum into the development of the Xuzhou software service outsourcing industry.

The Mayor hoped that Nasscom will bring its advantages on capital, talent and technology as per the agreement to improve the construction, operation and development of the park.

"The corridor will help strengthen China-India digital cooperation leveraging our respective strengths in hardware and software to build innovative products and solutions in the co-create mode," said Nasscom Director Gagan Sabharwal in the statement.

As the eastern region is known for manufacturing capabilities, the apex body expects collaborative case studies emerging from the smart manufacturing domain.

"As the third collaboration, we hope the new corridor will act as a building block towards strengthening the India-Chinese relationship while we stimulate the ecosystem," added Sabharwal.

India's Consul General in Shanghai, Anil Kumar Rai, said that being a dominant manufacturing country, China required software, IT and IT-enabled services to transform into smart manufacturing.

"The IT corridor at Xuzhou has the potential to fill the institutional void of software support for small and medium size industries in their language," added Rai.

As the economic centre in the regional economic layout, Xuzhou is an industrial powerhouse, with several firms setting up their base in the city.

First Published:Mar 8, 2019 4:41 PM IST