The poor roads in India meant it often took more than seven hours to drive 200 kilometers. In some places, workers had travel on foot to repair the engines. Plus, India had a very complicated language system with more than 1,600 languages and dialects and foreign companies had no preferential policies.

But these conditions also offered opportunities. The backward infrastructure needed development. The population of 1.2 billion was a huge market. And English was an official language in the polyglot nation.

More importantly, laws to protect intellectual property rights were strictly enforced.

After finally deciding to open a branch in India, Xu spent about a year selecting management personnel.

"We didn't send any Chinese, because we needed personnel who spoke fluent English and had a deep understanding of India and the technology. It's too hard to find such people in China," says Xu.

Through introductions by friends, Xu interviewed many Indian candidates. "But I had an intuition that the Indian personnel had some doubts about our Chinese enterprise."

The Indian prospects were invited to China. After seeing the country's development and the modern enterprise, they were confident about working for Power HF.

The Indian market demands respect for the culture. "Indians value family. Whenever an Indian employee has a birthday, wedding, anniversary or illness, they ask for a leave. If there is contradiction between the needs of the employees and the company, we must be patient and respect the choice of the employees, because it's their culture," Xu says.

Competing with about five local rivals, the Chinese firm tries to win with high quality, timely and relatively cheap services.

However, with the appreciation of the RMB, Chinese companies are under pressure abroad.

Xu says the Indian rupee devalued about 20 percent at one stage in 2013, while the RMB appreciated 5 percent, eroding 25 percent of the gross profit margin.