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Google to Invest $10B in India

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Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#111

Post by [deleted] »

kumarvvr wrote: post #82
buran77 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whe…

> Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whether it's decades of being the mole in a wack-a-mole game with the Chinese system, or having to invest extra billions in India. True to some extent only. Apart from profits, publicly traded companies also clamour for a stable business environment. And authoritarian countries have an inherent…

[deleted]

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#113

Post by t3rabytes »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #105
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is a giant market, an investment of $10 billion is a rounding error.

No, it's not. All Indian startups combined raised a total of $14B last year (2019).

Just because their VC totals don't match the bay area doesn't mean that this is a small investment.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#114

Post by f00zz »

zozbot234 wrote: post #56
mytailorisrich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protectionism works when you're weak and try to develop your own industry (all East Asian countries followed that path). Protectionism hinders you if you're strong and try to penetrate other countries' markets. Protectionism is often detrimental to consumers. Nothing is black and white.

East Asian development was not based on protectionism, it was based on providing goods/services for export (even when "weak") which requires openness to competition on a global scale. Protectionism was tried in Latin America and even in India prior to the 1980s and 1990s, and it has consistently been a failure.

Yes. Import substitution protectionist policies have been an ongoing disaster for Brazil and Argentina for nearly a century now. What countries like South Korea did was quite different.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#115

Post by econcon »

m0zg wrote: post #46

Is there even a way for Google to invest in a high-corruption country like India without paying bribes (which would break US anti-bribery laws)? I'm pretty sure such an investment would be impossible in e.g. Russia, where many a hand needs to be greased before anything can happen.

Who pays bribe directly and how can someone even figure that out?

When companies need to bribe, they bring consultants which get paid for a different service which is unrelated to what they are actually offering. The consultants charge a lot and bribe the agents on the government either through favours like enjoy our jet or penthouse in Italy or London and get this specific thing done or tell us where to send this cash to which country and which account #.

It's as simple as that. All that money is often written off in accounts as "promotional expense" or sometimes as a different line item under consultancy.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#116

Post by tester34 »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #105
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is a giant market, an investment of $10 billion is a rounding error.

No, it's not. All Indian startups combined raised a total of $14B last year (2019).

That's giant amount of money

How many serious start ups can be there?

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#117

Post by dis-sys »

bamboozled wrote: post #17
buran77 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whe…

No, but they need to make logical decisions about which market to invest in, and it seems they've picked a favorite and decided ? If I was making that decision, it would be clearly easier to do business in India rather than China and likely far more lucrative with less concerns about property theft, censorship and the stain that human rights abuses will leave. I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in Ch…

> I don't know if you've ever tried to setup anything in China, it's not exactly a straight forward process or something you'd want to have to do often.

try doing that in india, good luck for stable electricity supply.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#119

Post by laurent123456 »

Shivetya wrote: post #23
buran77 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't invest billions in India to shaft China, they're doing it to maintain or grow their position on the Indian market, which is a huge one. If India suddenly sees a wave of "build it at home" sentiment then Google or Apple won't want to be left out and fall behind the competition. Publicly traded companies can't afford to play favorites, they "have to" go where the profits are and make the best of it, whe…

Pretty sure there is a little bit of China exit strategy here as well. The actions taken in Hong Kong along with recent invasion demonstrations against Taiwan don't exactly make for a stable business environment. What is a business to do if China acts violently on either and suddenly your supply chain if off limits because of sanctions? Still after moving segments to India the next area is where? Africa is still a so…

Google has pretty much no business in China, so it makes no difference for them what's happening there.

Re: Google to Invest $10B in India

#120

Post by _jgdh »

kamaal wrote: post #70
ankit219 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a cause for alarm, and some Indians do see that as a threat. Right now, Indian society is caught in a deep web of fake news, false narratives, and the conflating of what the govt is, what the nation is, and the difference between the two. Many competitors have raised a lot of questions about how Jio did not follow the rules (there are a lot to link) the basic one being a rule about giving free plans for more…

Most Indians care only about the cheapest workable plan, product, service, while making a purchase. It's not about Jio, it's about the 500 rupees free call, free SMS, free 4G plans. As long as Jio offers it they'll use it. They'll drop it as soon as something cheaper comes around. Mukesh Amabani, is mostly raising money because he had simply too much debt, and he is also getting old. It could also be a part of larger…

> They'll drop it as soon as something cheaper comes around.

My bet - nothing cheaper comes along. Because Reliance's biggest competitive advantage is close links with the government, regardless of the party in power. A hypothetical competitor would find it difficult to get spectrum allocated, have trouble with land usage rights, tax issues like Vodafone had.

There is a reason foreign companies set up joint ventures with Reliance, Tata, Birla etc. Ostensibly it's because these companies "understand" the Indian market. In reality, it's because they have spent decades "lobbying" political parties and will continue doing so for several decades more. A company like Sky wouldn't know how to get started with political lobbying, wouldn't be comfortable with outright bribery, can't make a long term commitment to staying in India. So they set up Tata Sky - they supply the tech, Tata supplies the connections.

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