Sub-forum of the 2nd Global Programmers' Festival in Bangalore, India, Oct 10. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Prior to the upcoming Global Programmers' Festival in Xi'an from Oct 24 to 25, a sub-forum wrapped up in Bangalore, India on Oct 10 in a bid to promote IT cooperation between China and India.

Xi'an-headquartered software enterprises did not miss the opportunity to visit the promising "Software City", also known as "India's Silicon Valley", and expand their presence in the Indian market.

The Xi'an and Indian branches of the software service provider GrapeCity have just released a new version of GrapeLEAF, an online English teaching platform. With Xi'an's leading technologies and India's language expertise, it took less than a year for GrapeCity to complete the challenging system upgrade.

IT consultancy ThoughtWorks is another example of successful Sino-Indian cooperation. The company has 41 branches and over 5,000 employees in 14 countries.

"Compared with China, India has more advantages within the IT industry in terms of language proficiency, the talent pool and cultural acceptance," said Hu Kai, managing director of ThoughtWorks China.

India's software outsourcing is a national brand, much like China's manufacturing industry. According to Hu, with the 2nd Global Programmers' Festival bringing more Xi'an enterprises to India, more innovative ideas and technology breakthroughs will thrive thanks to bilateral cooperation.

Many leading enterprises and organizations, including the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), gave their thumbs up to the programmers' festival. Representatives from NASSCOM believe China will become a global AI leader within five to ten years and India should work with Chinese IT enterprises across more sectors.