As Chinese companies continue to grow and the internet market matures domestically, the Chinese tech giants are looking around for the next billion internet user market.

The bordering country of India with 1.3 billion people, a government eager to push the whole nation to go digital and a big workforce has got the attention of the tech giants from China and the rest of the world.

At the beginning of this month, Alibaba Group launched a one billion U.S. dollars investment plan in India's food delivery app Zomato, the financing process will be led by the company's financial services arm Ant Financial. Alibaba already invested 410 million U.S. dollars last year.

The investment could put Zomato on level pegging with Swiggy, India's leading food delivery app, which received a 1 billion U.S. dollars investment from Alibaba's arch competitor in China Tencent last December. In order to keep Swiggy's lead position in the industry, Tencent is likely to increase its investment down the road. The two tech giants' competition in China continues in India.

Besides the food delivery app market, Alibaba is spreading its investment in different technological sectors. Alibaba is also the main investor in India's digital payment platform Paytm and online grocery store Big Basket.

Paytm is trying to launch into the e-commerce market, which could put the company into direct competition with India's biggest online store invested in by Walmart and Amazon.

According to a report by KPMG last year, India has always been an attractive investment destination for China, and from 2015 onwards, the country has witnessed a significant increase in investment from China. A report by Indian local news website The Wire showed that since 2015, around 7 billion U.S. dollars in Chinese funding has poured into the Indian Tech sector, mainly going to tech startups.

Other than pumping cash into local Indian tech companies, Chinese companies have also been delivering tailor made products for the Indian market, such as video-sharing platform TikTok, UC Browser, and the U-Dictionary launched by NetEase.

India is going through a drastic digitalization process now, pushed not only by foreign tech companies, but the government, since according to Amitabh Kan, CEO of the National Institution for Transforming India, "It's the only chance for the country to leapfrog technologically and make big economic growth." He made the remark in a Fortune Magazine report in this January.

Back in 2007, only 40 million people in India had access to the internet, the number has subsequently jumped to 500 million, and is expected to reach 850 million in 2025. The sheer number of users could offer the Chinese and Western tech giants the expansion they are looking for.

However, there are many challenges ahead too, such as lack of infrastructure, language barriers, not to mention political ones.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to protect India's national tech companies from being swallowed whole by the likes of Google, Amazon and Walmart as well as Chinese titans like Tencent and Alibaba.