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India, the World's Second Largest Internet Market, Is Turning Its Back on Silicon Valley (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, India has wanted foreign companies to thrive in the country. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014, one of its early major pushes was to formulate plans and structure incentives to attract foreign investment. In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled plans to liberalize the foreign investment rules. He also visited the U.S. and met with top Silicon Valley executives, nearly all of whom subsequently expanded their commitments in India. It further introduced lofty incentives to encourage companies to participate in Make in India and Digital India, a set of state-run initiatives to drive job growth in the nation.
[...] But over the past year, in the run-up to the general elections in May, the Indian government has unveiled -- and in many cases, enforced -- a wave of sweeping changes. It now dictates how foreign companies handle and make use of Indian user data and other aspects of how ecommerce platforms operate, and it is working on introducing greater oversight for technology platforms. [...] Lobby groups that represent U.S. companies and industry watchers say they see an extreme shift from the "warm, welcoming, collaborative" approach the government exhibited in 2014. "In the past year or so, the engagement has been combative, with abrupt, disruptive policy changes that are being held without consultation, and, unusually, with absolutely no room for negotiation or even deadline extensions -- as we saw with data localisation and FDI in ecommerce," Prasanto K Roy, a technology and policy analyst, told VentureBeat. The story also looks at how much revenue Silicon Valley companies that count India as one of their biggest markets is generating there. Spoiler alert: it's very little.
[...] But over the past year, in the run-up to the general elections in May, the Indian government has unveiled -- and in many cases, enforced -- a wave of sweeping changes. It now dictates how foreign companies handle and make use of Indian user data and other aspects of how ecommerce platforms operate, and it is working on introducing greater oversight for technology platforms. [...] Lobby groups that represent U.S. companies and industry watchers say they see an extreme shift from the "warm, welcoming, collaborative" approach the government exhibited in 2014. "In the past year or so, the engagement has been combative, with abrupt, disruptive policy changes that are being held without consultation, and, unusually, with absolutely no room for negotiation or even deadline extensions -- as we saw with data localisation and FDI in ecommerce," Prasanto K Roy, a technology and policy analyst, told VentureBeat. The story also looks at how much revenue Silicon Valley companies that count India as one of their biggest markets is generating there. Spoiler alert: it's very little.
A couple bad actors ruin the trust for everyone.
Facebook and the likes have amassed a lot of power. An open market is a fair practice, but it is incredibly important that every country tries to build their own ecosystem of tech companies. It's unfathomable to imagine five U.S. companies dominating in most markets.
Indian politicians may have reservations about inviting foreign companies into domestic markets, but it's much more likely Silicon Valley companies haven't put forth the effort to seduce Indian legislators. Thinking the World needs you is confidence of the sort folks find distasteful, rather quickly. /p>
India's lawmakers are elected members of Parliament. Seriously, a bit of lobbying effort would go a long way.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Reject and invalidate all Indian H1-B visas. See how long they keep stonewalling us after that.
So, Europe imposes user protection and they are progressive champions of the people, but India imposes user protection and they are a backwards second world nation who doesn't know how to operate in the global economy, is that it?
India tried to liberalize the rules for foreign investors about 50 years ago, too, and attracted quite a few large American companies to do business there. But, the same sort of crackdown occurred and the foreign companies all bailed out and cut their losses. Now it seems to be happening again. Part of the problem is that several splinter groups of the Indian Communist party maintain a power base in different provincial governments in India. These people have the power to negotiate with the national government, and they generally behave like labor unions on steroids -- but they have the power to pass laws in their provinces as well. If India is really serious about attracting foreign investors, they had better stop their current behavior right away. No one from outside India will ever trust them again if they don't.
So countries making requirements on how companies handle and make use of user data and on how ecommerce platforms operate is considered an "extreme extreme" shift from "warm, welcoming, collaborative" to hostile ?
India is right. They have noticed they are getting raped and are unilaterally doing something about. Why should the rapists have any say in this?
It is a new world guys, the world has woken up to your shenanigans and is not putting up with it any longer.
"world's second largest internet market" = lots of people
"generating very little revenue" = no money
It looks like India is making a fair demand from Silicon Valley companies. When it invited them with open arms it was expected that the warms would be reciprocated It looks like India is making a fair demand from Silicon Valley companies. When it invited them with open arms it was expected that the warms would be reciprocated.
It is not one way street, that all companies get access to Indian markets and India don't even get a say on their users data security and privacy. Expecting financial data of Indian users to be stored locally is a reasonable demand. Another regulation that separates market place and manufacturer i.e., restrict monopoly power of market place provider is also reasonable. It provides level playing field to everybody.
If Silicon Valley companies expected to be given open field without any regulations, then it can be only termed as their fault. If they term this as turning back on Silicon Valley, it is their choice.
It is expected that companies like Twitter and Facebook remain impartial in the upcoming elections. Not take any sides and try to meddle in the election processes. Otherwise, they will have to be ready to face more stronger regulations.
What this is saying is that revenue from the Indian market is being captured by Silicon Valley instead of India, and India is sick of it.
Within two paragraphs the summary makes contradictory claims.
The claims are not contradictory.
1. India is the world's second biggest internet market (China is #1).
2. They aren't doing it with American tech.
Chinese smartphones are winning in India
Personal bribes are rare in the US. Our pay-to-play system is beyond the reach of your average wage earner.
Corruption happens primarily in secret and between the most powerful and wealthy. This is different than some countries where it can be normal to pay a police officer a "fine" that he pockets. Try that in the US and you'll not have a nice day.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What's that? country we've been sending our tech to takes decades of skills and education and goes their own way? Who could have seen that coming?
oh right, everyone. It's just the executives don't care about their country, only their wallet.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As near as I can tell, all India has done for US high tech is drive down salaries. In the ERP segment, where I work, back in the early 2000's you could make north of $200/hr as an independent contractor working on Oracle or SAP systems. Thanks to the influx of cheap labor, primarily from India, those rates are now about half that.
These big companies like IBM and Accenture have huge collections of programmers in India. Those jobs were not in addition to US positions. Those were US positions eliminated and transferred overseas. The remaining positions based in the US now pay less, largely due to all those newly laid off programmers fighting over fewer and fewer remaining jobs.
And now that India has gotten prosperous, off of our backs, they don't like the way the game is being played? Fuck them. I say we start cutting back on the H1-B visas. Let's see how the corrupt Indian politicians react when all those remittances start to slow down.
"with abrupt, disruptive policy changes that are being held without consultation, and, unusually, with absolutely no room for negotiation" Just like the tech company's terms of use then?
...as the European Union & some states in the USA. All they're doing is putting some protections on Indian citizens' personal data. Why should the Indian government let Silicon Valley collect, store, & exploit that much data on its citizens, including whichever Indian politicians & business people might use Silicon Valley services like Facebook, Google, & Twitter? Surely that would be a matter of national security & competitiveness in international politics & trade?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
You made the amazing point.
Mao destroyed China. First the Great Famine. Then the Cultural Revolution removing the intelligencia. 1976 China was impoverished of both money and culture and any quality of life. India was democratic, free, and its economy growing due to the green revolution.
Then Mao dies, the Deng Xiaoping revolution happens and China takes off. From a base of nothing, to what it is today. Truly amazing.
There is something deeply ingrained in Chinese culture that Mao could not kill and India does not have to make money. And as a result, despite the authoritarian issues that we find repulsive, the average poor Chinese lives much better than the average poor Indian.
The future may not be so bright for China. Xi Jinping's counter-reformation cannot be good for Chinese business in the longer term. And certainly not if they take on an aggressive foreign policy, in which case he could take down the entire world.
But for now, something about China is much, much more effective than the way things are done in India.
I definitely don't think this is going to matter one way or another. I actually have a fair bit of experience doing business in India, and it amounts to this: whatever someone will pay you in the US or EU, take a tenth of that and that's the MOST you will get from Indian users. I used to sell medical device coatings that would cost $20-$75/per coating per device. That's more than most people in India pay for the WHOLE device in most cases, depending. I sell courses online for $200/pc on my personal site. Indians offer about $20 for them, and still ask for discounts. I teach courses for a company that charges roughly $3,000 per person to have me teach them for three days, and we never go to India because there's no one in the whole country that would pay that. They keep trying to get us to go there for like 20 bucks a person. Not gonna happen. The reason for this is money is on a completely different scale there. A white collar professional makes about $600 to $1,000/month. That's considered good money. I tried to break a 1000 rupee note at a hotel concierge once (roughly equivalent to a 20-dollar bill), and they didn't have enough money in their entire cash register to do it. You can't make real money in India. If you do anything there at all, you do it because you want to help.
Glad to see someone still has it.
Perhaps India simply pays attention to what the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et al are doing to the United States and want absolutely no part of it.
Life is much easier if you're capable of learning from someone else's mistakes.
This could be a synopsis of the current american government just as well. What goes around comes around and people just don't trust america anymore.
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By that, I presume make the companies follow acceptable standards, pretty much as has been done in Europe with the GDPR.
The biggest effect upon US businesses of the GDPR is that comparable user protection for your citizens is seeming more common/likely. If the rest of the world follows these practices, it will be harder for your rulers to prevent you from benefiting from them.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Maybe I'm just getting old but to me, Silicon Valley is still about technology. Most of these concerns seem more about social networking and other personal data gathering, which I consider to be much older human activities that just happen to be easier to do when done on computers, not something that actually requires technology.
Though I suppose a good portion of the old Silicon Valley technology development has been moved to China already, so the above may be moot anyway.
India has its own networks, telcos, telco peering, ISP, products, social media and services.
The USA cant extract the cash it wants in the way it wants.
But trusted brands in India are making a lot of "internet' money.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It is a bit excessive to expect slashdot editors to know the difference between a user and success on the internet.
FTS: "In the past year or so, the engagement has been combative, with abrupt, disruptive policy changes that are being held without consultation, and, unusually, with absolutely no room for negotiation or even deadline extensions"
Except for the word 'unusually', isn't the above paragraph a pretty accurate description of how most big tech companies treat their users / customers / 'products of the human variety'?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Motorola hired Sanjay Jha who knew short term a cash drain so pulled back on low tier. Many cried but itâ(TM)s demographics strategic... donâ(TM)t think Mot got any cash out of India. China on the other hand was positive. Inexpensive products to distribute plus local profits.