India, the World's Second Largest Internet Market, Is Turning Its Back on Silicon Valley

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.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.