1. fortune india
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Chinese
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RVIND VOHRA, 44, loves telling stories in his
warm, throaty voice. We are discussing what the Chi-
nese think of doing business in India, and Vohra has
just the right story. “We recently had some visitors
from our head office in Shenzhen,” he says, mellow-
ing a notch. “After a couple of days, they said, ‘Arvind,
we want to work with you. We like it better here than
in China.’”
Ordinarily, that would be an ego boost for an out-
fit that is barely 18 months old and employs all of 63
people. But for Vohra, managing director of leading
Chinese mobile-phone maker Gionee’s (founded in
2002) India operations, it was a double-edged com-
pliment: He is after all fast friends of 15 years with
Gionee’s president William Lu Weibing.
The two first met while working for the Chinese
electronics company Konka in Delhi, and got along
famously. Lu eventually moved back to China, but
they took great pains to nurture the friendship, flying
down to share meals when either was in the other’s
country. It was Vohra who convinced Gionee to take
the plunge in India. “At that time, the company was
making $10 million a month (Rs 61.6 crore at current
New-age mobile and Internet companies are
trying to change the narrative of Chinese businesses.
Will a government intent on control let them?
By tanmoy goswami
Illustr ation by nil a nja n das

2. fortune india
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companies have droned on with the
same stereotypes: a culture that is
soullessly transactional, with a deep
lack of trust between the all-powerful
headquarters and Chinese expats run-
ning the show on the one hand, and
local employees treated as operational
cogs on the other. “There is a low
trust quotient attached to most Chi-
nese companies, not only in India but
also in many Western countries,” says
Anupama Rao, former Indian ambas-
sador to China. Fortune India has also
written about the shady image: “To
Indians, accustomed to the British,
European, and American ways of do-
ing business, the Chinese way is often
incomprehensible,” Mansi Kapur ob-
served in ‘The Way They Work’ exactly
two years ago.
It is this stubborn narrative that
Vohra is up against. His effort is ballsy,
not least because the Chinese govern-
ment is known to tightly herd its tro-
phy corporations to keep them from
straying. Even e-commerce sensation
Alibaba, which recently went pub-
lic in New York with a $21.8 billion
IPO—the largest in U.S. history—was
reportedly put under the cosh to list in
Hong Kong instead. Insidious owner-
ship is also common in China’s “pri-
vate sector” (see graphic ‘The Great
Wall’). On his part, Vohra says there’s
no problem “if your business is doing
well and you maintain transparent
financial records”. “But none of this
would have worked out without my
friendship with William,” he adds.
That disclaimer makes it tempting
to dismiss Gionee India as an aber-
ration. As it happens, it is just one in
a series of upstarts, all in the mobile
and Internet space, which are making
a bold push to make Chinese busi-
nesses “cool” in India. Take Oppo,
another ODM, which brought its own
smartphones here in January after
launching them successfully in more
than a dozen other markets. The com-
rates) as an original device manufac-
turer (ODM) for Indian companies,”
he says. “I told them they should stop
building others’ brands and focus on
their own.”
Vohra’s first move was to launch
a marketing blitz expected to cost
Rs 300 crore by the next fiscal, at-
tacking the poor quality perception
of Chinese products. He also shed the
“cheap” tag by gradually pushing the
prices of his phones 10% above local
competitors’. In a more daring bet, he
shunned the discount-driven craze for
online retail.
There’s a different story that he
likes telling to describe the organisa-
tion he is trying to build. He once gave
a blank letterhead with his signature
to an executive who was hesitant to
take some strong decisions. “I told
him he could write whatever he want-
ed and put the blame on me if things
went wrong.”
People working closely with him
credit the open, startup-like culture
for the fact that Gionee India has lost
only one employee so far. Vohra him-
self believes that the mobile business
is highly entrepreneurial and needs to
empower people to make gut-based
decisions, while admitting that this
culture shocks his Chinese visitors
who are used to things being far more
uptight. (The Chinese expression
for it is “Jun jun, chen chen, fu fu, zi
zi”: There is harmony when the king
is king, and the minister is minister;
when the father is father, and the son
is son.) He doesn’t explicitly say so, but
it’s also the reason some of them don’t
want to go back.
So far, Shenzhen isn’t complaining:
Gionee India is on target to hit sales of
Rs 3,000 crore by the end of this fis-
cal, giving it a 4% share of the Indian
mobile-phone market (estimated at
63.21 million units as of the second
quarter of 2014 by market intel-
ligence firm IDC), and making it the
According to the Indian government, the biggest Chinese inves-
tors here are from old-economy sectors such as mining, energy,
and heavy engineering (see graphic ‘Old Money’); my attempts to
contact several of them went nowhere.
In terms of attention, two companies have had a disproportion-
ate share: telecom equipment suppliers Huawei (private sector)
and ZTE (state-owned but privately run; 71 on the Fortune China
500), which dominate large parts of the global market, including
India. (They also sell mobile phones here, but that’s a side show.)
In 2012, a U.S. Congressional committee warned against the use
of their products on suspicions of government-commissioned es-
pionage, leading to extensive coverage of Huawei’s founder Ren
Zhengfei, who once served in the People’s Liberation Army. ZTE
has come under a cloud in several other markets, including the
Philippines and parts of Africa. Earlier this year, Huawei allegedly
hacked into India’s state-run operator BSNL’s network. It won’t
respond to my questions, but a former telecom executive who has
worked with these firms tells me on condition of anonymity that
they survive “thanks to powerful friends in the telecom industry”.
In the absence of transparent communication, stories on these
company’s most important play outside China. (It is also present
in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Nigeria; Fortune India could not
independently verify the financials.) Remember, this is a market
where barring the top three (Samsung, Micromax, and Nokia),
all others have single-digit share. “People said I’d be finished
working with an unknown Chinese company. Now, I feel the new
guys [rival Chinese mobile-phone companies Oppo and Xiaomi,
which entered India this year] should pay me royalty for showing
the way,” Vohra says, only half in jest.
Vohra is trying to rewrite two canons: One, the more obvious,
is about cheap Chinese labels. The other is more subtle, and has
to do with the Chinese “way”.
historically, the chinese way in India has been a
murky one, shaped by a
handful of state-owned industrial behemoths with little love of
brands: the antithesis of the intensely consumer-facing mobile
business. (Lenovo, ranked 20 on the Fortune China 500, is a rare
example of a successful Chinese consumer brand, but that is gen-
erally attributed to its 2005 acquisition of IBM’s PC business.)
xiaomi
flipkart
manu jain
India head
michael adnani
VP & head—brand
alliances
“For every
naysayer,
we have
10 fans
defending
us on
Facebook.
We’d rather
concentrate
on bringing
our next
model to
them.”
“Manu ran
a one-man
show when
Xiaomi
launched.
We solve
a lot of
problems
locally,
through
relentless
communi-
cation.”
$396 $65
million
China’sshare
inIndia’s$214
billionFDI
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billion
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Indiahasa$31
billiondeficiton
itsbooks
adnani:deepakg.pawar
photographs by reuben singh

3. fortune india
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pany straightaway signed sponsor-
ship deals with the blockbuster reality
show Bigg Boss and the Champions
League T20, and hired Bollywood
A-listers Hrithik Roshan and So-
nam Kapoor as brand ambassadors.
Though it won’t reveal revenues, In-
dia CEO Tom Lu indicates the expec-
tations by saying that the company
already has 600 employees here.
Then there’s UC Web, a browser
company acquired by Alibaba in June.
When it came to India three years
ago, it operated out of an apartment
in Gurgaon, and local candidates put
off by its obscurity abandoned it en
masse during the recruitment process.
Now, it is India’s top mobile browser
with 37% market share, beating the
popular Opera and Android browsers,
per analytics site StatCounter.
There’s also WeChat, the world’s
fastest-growing messaging service
with 438 million active users (leader
WhatsApp has 500 million) owned
by Internet services company Tencent
(93 on the Fortune China 500), which
launched in India last year with ads
featuring Bollywood stars. According
to its PR partners, Nilay Arora, its
India head, declined to speak to
us because “WeChat considers itself
international, not Chinese”.
the biggest dent in percep-
tions came
six months ago, when Beijing-based
Xiaomi launched its smartphones in
India. Founded as a software firm four
years ago, Xiaomi didn’t sell its first
phones until August 2011. Today, it is
China’s No. 1 smartphone brand, and
in October, briefly became the third-
largest in the world, trailing only
Samsung and Apple. In India, it ex-
pected to sell 10,000 phones a week,
but has ended up selling 10 times as
many—based completely on word of
mouth and social-media evangelism
by its devout fans. Its other scarcely
nology sector, “India is emerging as
mission-critical to realise their global
ambitions,” because its bigger than
any other market outside China.
Vohra confirms that “a company’s per-
formance in India is a fair indicator of
its global potential”.
India’s newfound economic impe-
tus after the formation of the BJP gov-
ernment in New Delhi also makes it
a vital pitstop for Chinese businesses
looking to make meaningful invest-
ments. The two economies have fol-
lowed sharply contrasting trajectories
in the recent past: While sentiment
and growth forecasts have rebounded
in India, China has experienced a pro-
longed slump. During President Xi
Jinping’s recent visit to India, the buzz
tially adding up to almost $2 billion on a who’s who of Fortune
500 companies. This includes a $489 million levy against Glaxo-
SmithKline (GSK) on account of bribery—the harshest corporate
fine ever in China (see ‘Beijing Pulls Back the Welcome Mat’, page
146)—and potentially $1 billion against Qualcomm for alleged
antitrust practices. The Brookings Institution says the air for for-
eign businesses is thick with “fear and loathing”; The Telegraph
(Britain) says the golden age of foreign companies is over; while
a Forbes blogger simply describes China’s attitude as “mugging”.
“The Chinese government is playing a two-pronged game,” says
Gupta. “One, they are making China less welcoming to Western
companies. Two, as part of explicit national policy, they are sup-
porting Chinese companies to go global and emerge as major
players in as many industries as possible.”
Despite its diplomatic notoriety—which has been the domi-
nant theme in its relationship with India too—China is known
for its ability to keep aside dogma while doing business. India’s
vast, hungry consuming class is lending a critical helping hand.
Gupta says for many Chinese companies, especially in the tech-
believable feats include a 4.2-second sell-out (100,000 phones)
on e-commerce site Flipkart, indicating mass hysteria of the kind
no other tech company—let alone a Chinese one with an unpro-
nounceable name—has ever triggered in India.
In October, Xiaomi got an early reality check as the cyber-se-
curity hoodoo caught up with it: The media dug up an Indian Air
Force advisory that its servers back in China could be leaking sen-
sitive user data. The company acknowledged the concerns while
denying any wrongdoing, and announced that it would build lo-
cal data centres tentatively by 2015. “These allegations are by no
means our biggest headache,” says Manu Jain, the soft-spoken
33-year-old head of Xiaomi India, with a confidence that would
be arrogant if it weren’t earnest. “For every naysayer, we have 10
fans defending us on Facebook. We’d rather concentrate on bring-
ing our next model to them.”
Some like Amar Babu, managing director of Lenovo India,
want more time before calling this an inflection point. “It takes
years to build durable brands,” Babu says. “These companies have
done something right, but it’s too early to comment on the future.”
University of Maryland professor and China expert Anil Gupta
is more direct. He calls the “international” claims of Chinese com-
panies “mostly hogwash”. “Even for companies such as Unilever
or PepsiCo, it has taken a long time to become truly internation-
al, and they’re not yet there,” says Gupta. “In the case of Chinese
firms, [government interference] will make things even harder.”
To others, the sudden burst of these companies suggests a neat
formula. “It is no accident that they are mostly from the mobile
space,” says Jayanth Kolla, founder and partner at Bangalore-
based telecom consultancy Convergence Catalyst. “The Chinese
are masters of the fast product development cycles associated
with the business. It helps that this is the sector with the lowest
entry barrier at the moment,” he adds, referring to India’s smart-
phone boom (it is the world’s third-largest smartphone market
after China and the U.S.), fuelled by a customer base that is no
longer loyal to the same old brands. The preponderance of the
Android operating system has further levelled the playing field.
Vineet Durani, director at the Windows phone group at Micro-
soft—which has hardware partnerships with Gionee, Lenovo, and
ZTE—invokes the well-oiled, low-cost manufacturing ecosystem
back in China. “ODMs in the Shenzhen area already account for
some 40% of global production” with constantly improving qual-
ity standards, Durani points out, while echoing Babu’s reserva-
tions about the current hype.
Vohra says it simply: “If Indian companies [like Micromax]
can have global ambitions using Chinese manufacturing, why
can’t the Chinese themselves?” Except, as with most Chinese am-
bitions, this one’s not free of the spectre of geopolitical muscle-
flexing. The rise of these companies has coincided with an unfore-
seen crackdown against Western multinationals in China: Since
August 2013, the government has imposed corporate fines poten-
37%
share
ofUC Browser
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MILLION
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WeChat,
makingitthe
fastestgrowing
messenger
serviceinthe
world
UCbrowser

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centred on China’s comedown from
a promised $100 billion investment
in India to only $20 billion. Working
India’s high-profile mobile phone sec-
tor can mask some of that mood, and
serve as a playbook for other Chinese
businesses, which could use India not
just a market but also as a tactical des-
tination for their capital.
to demystify the Chinese gov-
ernment’s busi-
ness stakes, Gupta classifies Chinese
firms into three categories. First, there
are the small and medium-sized ones
that are mostly left to their own means
and often resort to corruption to get
work done. Perhaps they really don’t
matter that much. Then, there are the
large private-sector companies, such
as automakers Geely and BYD, which
often need formal government help in
exchange for supporting its policies.
For instance, Geely used low-cost
loans from state-owned banks to ac-
quire Volvo Cars.
In the third category, Gupta puts
“the very large and high-flying” pri-
vate-sector tech companies—includ-
ing Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, Baidu (a
search and social media giant), Ten-
cent, Lenovo, and Xiaomi—which
receive “massive policy help”. For in-
stance, Huawei and ZTE “get large,
low-cost loans, subsidised R&D as-
sistance from government labs, and
preference in purchases from state-
owned mobile operators (all of them
state-owned)”. Baidu has benefited
from the government’s decision to
throw out Google and ban Facebook
and Twitter. “These companies know
that they owe their success heavily to
the government,” says Gupta. “Thus,
they can be expected to follow govern-
ment diktat if asked to.”
With their growing global visibil-
ity, this last set of companies is in
fact central to Beijing’s nationalistic
surge. Consider that Alibaba’s block-
cultivate strong leaders, giving them
a “double-barrelled advantage”.
Often, a preference for leaders with
international and entrepreneurial ex-
perience runs through them. Xiaomi,
for instance, pivots on Hugo Barra, its
Brazilian head of global businesses,
formerly a Google star in charge of
Android product management. Co-
founder Bin Lin built Google China’s
mobile search team, while founder,
chairman, and CEO Jun Lei is a serial
entrepreneur and angel investor.
In India, the accent is increasingly
on empowering locals with startup
chops. Xiaomi India head Jain was
CEO of e-commerce startup Jabong.
His crack team: Myshkin Ingawale
(chief of staff), founder of life-sciences
startup Biosense, and Alpesh Ashar
(head of after-sales service), who
earlier grew Lakme’s salon business.
Gionee’s Vohra too ran a gig as an
independent consultant.
Earlier, the absence of locals in the
frontline added to prejudices. “The
average Chinese still has very low
awareness of India,” says ambassador
Rao. “They see a dichotomy between
the international success of some of
India’s private sector companies and
its slow infrastructure development,
which they attribute to poor gover-
nance and democracy,” she adds.
The secretary of a Delhi-based
trade and cultural advisory who didn’t
want to be named says many Chinese
companies still don’t see India as a
long-term investment destination for
those reasons. (China contributed
a piddly $396.13 million to India’s
$214.05 billion foreign direct
investment receipts from Apr. 2000 to
Feb. 2014, despite dominating the $65
billion bilateral trade relationship.)
“Now, the allure of the Indian market
has grown. The Chinese realise that
they need to trust locals if they want
a bigger share,” he says. Gionee’s
Lu concurs that “the India business
strength. However, things are hardly ever that black-and-white,
if you believe the former telecom executive. “Until very recently,
the Chinese government used to flaunt the international success
of Huawei. But since it was thwarted in the prized U.S. market,
the government’s affections have shifted to the new breed of
consumer technology companies,” he tells me.
Trouble is, in the muddy waters of China’s state-controlled cap-
italism, it’s often impossible to sieve fact from fiction. In Febru-
ary, Huawei opened up its books to the Financial Times, but the
shadow of the past has proved difficult to shake off.
to be fair, there’s more to the success of these “high-
flying” companies than government backing.
“The country’s domestic firms are more sophisticated and
competitive,” writes Ian Bremmer, president of political risk
consultancy Eurasia Group (‘The New Cold War on Business’,
Fortune.com). Gupta concedes that they have managed to
buster IPO took place amid global frenzy on the same day GSK
was handed the fine. (Soon after, Alibaba’s charismatic founder
Jack Ma was in India, reportedly mulling a partnership with
e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal to enter India. In fact both
Indian e-commerce leaders—Snapdeal and Flipkart—have re-
peatedly cited Ma’s company as an inspiration.)
“[The IPO and the fine] are perfect examples to showcase the
rise of China on both the economic and political fronts,” writes
George Chen in the South China Morning Post. “Such a huge fine
would have been unlikely 10 or 20 years ago when Beijing wasn’t
economically or politically powerful enough to afford to get
tough,” he adds. (Raveendra Chittoor, assistant professor of strat-
egy at the Indian School of Business [ISB], Hyderabad, points
out that China is not the only country to use such strong-arm tac-
tics: “The U.S. humiliated Ranbaxy in much the same way.”)
Predictably, all the companies I spoke to deny any pressure to
preserve the national character, or play a part in Beijing’s show of
Rs 300
crore
GioneeIndia’s
projected
marketingspend
bytheendofthe
nextfiscal.
Rs 9,999
priceof
Xiaomi’s
made-for-India
4G-readyphone
600
employees
atOppoIndia,
whichcame
herelessthana
yearago
OWNER ESTD. OWNERSHIP MAIN PLAY
LENOVO 1984 PRIVATE SECTOR COMPUTERS, MOBILE
HAIER 1984
unclear; significant
gov. stake reported
consumer durables
ZTE 1985
STATE-OWNED,
privately operated
NETWORK EQUIPMENT
HUAWEI 1987 EMPLOYEE-OWNED NETWORK EQUIPMENT
OWNER ESTD. OWNERSHIP MAIN PLAY
TENCENT 1998 PRIVATE SECTOR INTERNET
ALIBABA 1999 PRIVATE SECTOR e-commerce
GIONEE 2002 PRIVATE SECTOR MOBILE
OPPO 2008 PRIVATE SECTOR mobile
XIAOMI 2010 PRIVATE SECTOR MOBILE
Then...
...and Now
old money
Old-economy
sectors have
dominated Chinese
FDI in India.
THE Great wall
China’s new-age tech MNCs are very different
creatures compared to the pioneers.
Metallurgical
industries
Automobile
Industrial
machinery
Services
sector*
Power
Others
24
34
25
7
6 4
% share of
Chinese FDI
in India
source: government of india, fortune india research
*Services sector includes
financial, banking, insurance,
non-financial/business,
outsourcing, r&d, courier, tech.
testing, and analysis.
gionee
arvind vohra
India managing
director
“As a
business-
man,
you can
correct
biases
about your
product,
but not the
political
situation.”

5. should be run by Indians”.
Michael Adnani, Flipkart’s vice
president of retail and head of brand
alliances, who was instrumental in
bringing Xiaomi to India, has also
noticed the increased trust. “Manu
ran a one-man show when Xiao-
mi launched,” Adnani points out.
(The team is now 50.) “These days,
we solve a lot of problems locally,
through relentless communication.”
To my charge that the Chinese are
transactional, Adnani says Xiaomi
never placed any demands when the
partnership was being worked out.
“The talk was all about complement-
ing each other’s strengths.”
However, there’s still a strong
feeling that Chinese companies are
only interested in squeezing India,
unlike Western companies like GE
and Philips, which have used India
as a source of reverse innovation
for their global practices. “Chinese
companies may not feel the need to
learn anything from India, because
China itself is the world’s biggest
laboratory for emerging markets,”
says Chittoor of ISB.
Vohra disagrees. “I am off to China
to speak to our Chinese distributors
about how business is done in India,”
he says. “As the India business grows,
so will our impact.”
Xiaomi’s Jain adds that the spe-
cific needs of India are increasingly
at the centre of the company’s long-
term thinking. “We now have cus-
tomers from over 1,000 Indian cities,
so our reach is well and truly local,”
he says. “Our next plan is to identify
mobile-services startups from across
India to mentor and invest in. We
are also thinking of building manu-
facturing and R&D setups in India.”
Days before we went to press, Xiao-
mi launched its first made-for-India
phone: a sub-Rs 10,000 4G device
in partnership with Airtel; Apple’s
iPhone 6 Plus, with which it claims
to share several features, costs over six times more. (In an-
other utterly un-Chinese gesture, Hugo Barra personally
called journalists to attend the launch in Gurgaon.) Srini
Gopalan, director of Airtel’s consumer business, calls it the
first big step in making 4G a mass-market proposition, giv-
ing a fillip to the Internet ecosystem in India.
UC Browser has risen to the top on the back of similar
localisation: Its interface is loaded with widgets of popular
Indian portals, making it stickier than rival standard-issue
browsers. More important, its data compression technolo-
gy is tailored to offset the slow Net speeds in much of India.
at bangalore’s popular Techsparks entrepreneur-
ship summit a couple of months
ago, Jain was invited to share his Xiaomi experience, fol-
lowing speakers like Nandan Nilekani (former CEO, Info-
sys), Ravi Venkatesan (former chairman, Microsoft India),
and Bikram Bedi (head, India region, Amazon Web Ser-
vices). Jain got the reception of a rockstar, until a young
ethical hacker from Pune asked him about “the server prob-
lem”. “How do you plan to get back the trust?” the lad stern-
ly demanded, even as Jain tried calmly explaining how
nothing Xiaomi does violates standard industry practice.
“The cyber world is a nasty, brutish one,” ambassador
Rao reminds me. “Every equipment supplier or developer
has the ability to access networks, and a scenario where
such a company gives in to pressure from its government
to use cyber warfare techniques ... cannot be ruled out.”
Rao adds that “everybody spies on everybody” is a reality in
international affairs. “The Chinese have acquired a reputa-
tion in this game.”
That sums up the somewhat unfair burden on Jain’s ilk:
For the first time in decades, the sniggering attitude to-
wards Chinese companies seems to be changing. But given
China’s “reputation”, and a government intent on using
business for political leverage, the process might be a plod
rather than a canter.
Expensive marketing or virality on social media can de-
liver an instant spike in sales or market share, but to over-
come the mental blocks in India, these companies will have
to dig deep. “As they mature, they will realise that the typi-
cally Chinese approach of throwing money at a problem
doesn’t work,” says Chittoor of ISB. “Earning legitimacy is a
key test for truly global firms.”
Vohra is pragmatic: Don’t crib about things that are
not in your control. “As a businessman, you can correct
biases about your product, but not the political situation.”
Friend Lu is more cheerful: “We have the right people, good
culture, good business model, a great product and brand.
God will acknowledge our effort and bring us good luck!”
$21.8
$489
billion
Raisedduring
Alibaba’s
IPOinNew
York—the
largestinU.S.
history
MILLION
Fineslapped
onGSKby
theChinese
government
foractsof
corruption—
thelargest
corporate
penaltyin
China’shistory;
itcamethe
samedayas
Alibaba’slisting.
feedback letters@fortuneindia.com
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200