Profits and losses. Geopolitics has always gone hand in hand with technology. From Angela Merkel to Emmanuel Macron, from Xi Jinping to Donald Trump, everyone dreams of mastering their destiny by taming the electrons of the atom or the viruses. The takeover of Hong Kong by Beijing has accelerated the phenomenon. The latest avatar is the announcement by the United Kingdom of the ban of Huawei from all of its telecom equipment by 2027. A decision which owes a lot to American pressure, which pushes Europeans to let go of the Chinese group. The Hong Kong affair also completed convincing Google, Facebook and others that there was no hope on Chinese soil.
They therefore transfer their ambitions to India, whose population will soon exceed that of China. With 500 million Internet users, it is already close behind the Middle Kingdom in terms of the use and adoption of digital. This is the reason why Google announced, Monday, July 13, its intention to invest nearly 10 billion dollars (8.7 billion euros) over the next five years in this country. And, on Wednesday July 15, the conglomerate Reliance, one of the world leaders in refining and petrochemicals, announced that Google was taking 7.7% of the capital of its telephone operator Jio for 4.5 billion dollars.
Huge promises
Under the leadership of Mukesh Ambani, heir to the founder of Reliance and the richest man in Asia, Jio has become, in a few years, the country’s leading telephone operator, with nearly 400 million subscribers. He has developed a platform of digital products (telephones) and services, from video to shopping, via business services. A Silicon Valley by itself, with the power equivalent to that of an Alibaba or a Chinese WeChat. No wonder, therefore, that American digital stars, lacking in Asia, parade in close rank to get on the train. Facebook, Intel, Silver Lake, Qualcomm and now Google invite themselves to its capital. The promises are immense in a country which is certainly less wealthy than China, but in which the adoption of digital technology is just as massive.
A final element plays in favor of this Indian summer, which charms Americans so much. The bosses of IBM, Google, Microsoft, Adobe are all of Indian origin, often from the same technology institutes in the country. Their taste for numbers and their ease in evolving in complex and rowdy environments have propelled them to the top of these high-tech icons. The ideal place to participate in the great geopolitical shift from the “Chinese dragon” to the “Indian tiger”.
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