Chinese comms vendor AsiaInfo and India’s Reliance Industries are to co-develop new services for businesses under a joint agreement signed in Mumbai, India.

The partners say they aim to create a new ‘software and services powerhouse’ to serve India and the surrounding region. The joint venture will be headquartered in Mumbai and recruit staff from both companies initially, before widening its talent search internationally in a bid to recruit at least 200 staff by early 2016.

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is India’s largest private sector company. On March 31 2015 it reported revenues of $62.2 bn and net profit of US$ 3.8 b and is currently ranked 158th in the Fortune 500 by revenue and 142nd in terms of profits. Its activities include hydrocarbon exploration and production, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals, retail and telecommunications.

Beijing-based telco supplier AsiaInfo creates business and operations support systems and professional services for the telecoms, online and IoT industries. In China it has a 50% market share in billing, CRM and business intelligence through partnerships with telcos China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. In September AsiaInfo bought the Chinese subsidiary of security firm Trend Micro including licensing of core technology and product copyrights, as part of a stated intention to expand into big data and cloud security for its Chinese customers and reach new vertical sectors such as finance, education, manufacturing and healthcare.

The new Indo-Chinese partnership means both enterprises can develop digital services for a large scale market, said a Reliance Industries spokesman.

“Combining China’s largest IT software and services company with one of India’s largest and most progressive business groups, will create a technology powerhouse to compete on the global stage,” said AsiaInfo’s Dr Edward Tian.