The fine weather for entrepreneurship is one thing in common between the world’s two largest countries.Yet the emerging business economy in China and India present several contrasts, the most obvious one being the markets that the startups target. While many Indian startups target overseas markets, for Chinese entrepreneurs the market is at home. Trailblazers like Alibaba and Tencent are shaped by fierce local competition, a unique brand of innovation, and an ambitious government."More than 99 per cent of Chinese entrepreneurs only bear in mind Chinese consumers," said Ben Jiang, author of Web Behind the Wall, a guide for foreign companies looking to enter China. Out of 60 companies hosted by Chinaccelerator, top accelerator in China, 80 per cent are focused on the Chinese market. Only when they succeed at home do China’s entrepreneurs look outside the country’s borders. This home-first strategy has proven to be especially successful – 109 Chinese companies are now listed on Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.This is in stark contrast to India’s technology entrepreneurs, many of whom start by conceptualising and designing offerings that target developed markets in the US and Europe and now even SouthEast Asia. "Many companies have begun spending time regularly in the US and some have crossed the chasm," expressed Pankaj Jain, venture partner at 500Startups. The result of this strategy also offers a stark contrast to the Chinese experience – just eight Indian technology companies are listed on US exchanges, although as many as 800 startups are launched every year. Investors are of the view this may change soon in India too, as consumer internet companies that sell to Indians emerge as the country’s most valuable startups."The tipping point for India will be when the domestic consumption market really takes off, (as) the Chinese market took off ten years ago," said Victor Leung, partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers in China, which has backed 68 Chinese ventures including search engine Baidu. The Menlo Park-based KPCB has offices in Beijing and Shanghai but none in India.Where India prides itself on its ingenious jugaad methods, China has shanzhai – or the simple act of copying existing products and services in the market. Localised versions of foreign internet brands dominate the Chinese market – Renren for Facebook, Sina Weibo for Twitter. In an infamous example, the Apple logo and trademark were registered by a local Chinese company before Apple reached the country.And at the height of the cloning craze, it is said that there were more than 5,000 Groupon copycats in China. But local companies are not immune to the shanzhai attack either. Venture capitalists remark that in China, if an entrepreneur pitches an idea to an interested investor or partner at 10 am, three spinoffs would be created by the time the clock hits 2 pm on the same day. "In this environment, if a company does well, they are staying ahead of imitators and outrunning them," said Steven White, a professor of entrepreneurship at Tsinghua, China’s top university.Despite being guarded by the "Great Firewall of China", Chinese ventures do not enjoy undue advantage provided by the government. For sure, the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook, and most recently Instagram are all inaccessible in China.But this does not necessarily benefit local mimickers. "Many private exchanges on controversial topics within local messaging platform WeChat are censored as well," said Jiang. "The government is not actually trying to impede the growth of startups here unless social politics are compromised."Those looking to build products for the Chinese market also soon realise they have to customise it to suit local tastes. "(This) automatically adds to costs," said Mohan Kumar, executive director of Norwest Venture Partners in India, who has led his fund’s investments in China.In a country where only 0.73 per cent of the population speaks English (around one crore people, compared to 12.5 crore in India), corporations from abroad must master the notoriously difficult Chinese language in order to compete – an almost impossible feat for non-native speakers that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is devoting time to daily.Foreign entrants from Evernote and LinkedIn to India’s Infosys have coped by going local. "We needed someone local to enter negotiations, so we hired a CEO from China," said Vineet Toshniwal, former head of Infosys Greater China and currently managing director of Equirus Capital. "Two years later we had about 800 people at our China office, 80 per cent of whom were Chinese."Where China scores is in the unstinted support it offers entrepreneurs – things happen because of the government. While in India, things happen despite the government.The number of new companies established has become a performance metric for both city and regional governments. It takes around a month to incorporate a business, and often the state offers seed funding of at least RMB 100,000 ($16,250/Rs 1 lakh). "All over China, even in small and medium cities, local governments are nurturing science parks to encourage software development, while providing incentives in tax, research, and investment," said Pat Chan, founder of seven-year-old IOT company Borqs, headquartered within Beijing’s iconic startup district, Haidian/Chaoyang.Borqs also has a 300-strong research and development centre in Bangalore. "The Indian government is really quite behind in incentivising the hightech industry in comparison," said Chan. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is moving to change this perception. In his union budget proposal announced last July, he set apart Rs 10,000 crore exclusively for startups – the government’s first significant investment into the ecosystem.With rapid economic growth over the last two decades, China’s startup ecosystem is aflush with money, with many retired financiers and government officials pouring in their fortunes. More recently, a number of former entrepreneurs who have made big money from IPOs are investing into the system, and are shifting into midstage and seed stage investments – similar to India’s current state of venture capital."There is actually more competition among VCs right now to invest in fewer and fewer quality opportunities," said Chan of Borqs. "This is why valuations are going higher and higher."