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This article examines Bulgaria's electronic trade with India between 1967 and 1990. The developing world became a formative learning experience for the computer industry, as it came up against both a highly protectionist state trying to foster its own industry, and competition from Western companies playing to different rules than COMECON rivals. In order to gain a place in this lucrative market, Bulgarian computer enterprises developed their technical services, advertising and negotiating capacities, learning how to be capitalists in a socialist world. This 'learning through competition and copying' was a feedback channel that changed the way that the company operated in other parts of the world, diversifying its marketing and user services within the socialist world too, standing out from the other socialist industries. As such, this global operation was a formative experience for many executives and technicians, making them a group that was plugged into international expertise networks. Thus the computer became a channel for being part of the emerging information economy, and the Global South became a place to meet the First World without restriction. The article thus shows India's importance to Bulgaria as a space to learn from and profit in, rather than an object of socialist development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]