Ties in the time of Artificial Intelligence

India's small and medium-sized software firms, wanting to ride the wave of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IOT), could soon find a new home in China's northeast corner. Nasscom, India's IT industry body, has negotiated a deal with local authorities in Dalian, a famous port city on the Liaodong Peninsula, to establish an IT corridor at the Bio-diverse Emerging Science Technology (BEST) City, on the outskirts of the metropolis. In turn, it would allow small Indian cyber companies to register with the new IT cluster. The Chinese companies, who are not a part of the top 100 biggies, are also likely to benefit. "The story is a little more complicated," said Gagan Sabharwal, senior director with Nasscom, referring to his disruptive bottom-up model, which could script the next chapter of India's software story. "We want to marry Indian strengths, especially of small companies, in software with China's heft in hardware."