On the face of it, many of India’s bright new companies have benefited from Chinese involvement. Chinese investments in Indian startups grew 12-fold between 2016 and 2019. By then, Jack Ma’s Alibaba and its fintech affiliate Ant Financial had invested in at least six Indian startups, five of which became unicorns—billion-dollar private companies—and Tencent had backed a further 12, of which seven achieved unicorn status. At the time, at least 18 of India’s 30 unicorns were backed by Chinese investors. However, in 2020, cracks started appearing in the investment relationship between the frenemies, and since then Indian startups have largely...