Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his United States visit from New York this week with unmistakable signals that he wishes to take India on a higher growth path through American investments and technology collaboration, inviting U.S. business to enter India without inhibitions and join his “Make in India” campaign.
That Modi, during his second visit to the U.S since becoming the prime minister, would devote his five-day visit largely to wooing the investment community, and the tech-entrepreneurs later in California to make his dream of digital India program, an emphatic success, was evident from the list of people he was to meet both in New York and California – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and CEOs from other media entities as well as Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JP Morgan, Steve Schwarzman, chairman, CEO of Blackstone, Charles Kaye, Co-CEO of Warburg Pincus, and Peter Hancock, president and CEO, AIF Insurance, all in New York and, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, CEO of Google Sundar Pichai, Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, John Chambers, CEO of Cisco and Shantanu Narayen, the president and the CEO of Adobe. The Prime Minister visits Google while in California where he will reach evening of Sept. 26.
Starting in New York Sept 24, Modi made a strong pitch for investment in India during a roundtable with top Wall Street CEOs at Waldorf Astoria where he is staying. He touted India’s 7.3 percent GDP growth last year, noting that there has been a 40 percent increase in Foreign Direct Investment. He talked about his government’s efforts during the last 15 months to increase investment in areas of taxation, infrastructure and FDI.
By and large, the CEOs appreciated the steps taken by the government on ease of doing business, on economic growth and reforms. All of them, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup told reporters, were very bullish on India and said that India has a lot of potential for investment. They also acknowledged that financial market reforms have already started and more reforms would happen in the days to come.
Together, these companies like JP Morgan, Blackstone, Warburg Pincus and AIF Insurance, at the roundtable, manage billions and billions of dollars. “Most of them have exposure to India. So, this was a very good opportunity for the Prime Minister to listen to their experience of doing business with India, to see what concerns they had and how we could work to remove those concerns,” Swarup said.
Start-up Sector
“CEOs were very interested in India’s start-up sector. They appreciated steps taken by government to make business easier,” Modi tweeted after the hour-long meeting with CEOs.
The Prime Minister assured the investors that “work is already underway” to resolve their issues and asked the CEOs to give him a detailed note on all the concerns raised during the meeting which will be examined in detail and responded to. Modi “took on board” suggestions made by the executives as he outlined the scale of development he expects to happen in India and the tremendous opportunities it offers to foreign institutional investors and for FDI.
Giving the CEOs an indication of the quantum of investment required, Modi told them that India is going to construct 50 million houses, 600 villages are going to be connected with broadband and 24×7 electricity would be provided to all in an environmentally sustainable way. For these developments, 175 Giga watts of renewable energy are going to be created, 50 big cities are going to have metros.
Modi’s point was India was not just among the fastest-growing economies but had also done much towards the ease of doing business, something that should attract investors.
Media Moguls
The point was well-taken also by media moguls, including Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of Newscorp and 21st Century Fox, his son James Murdoch, CEO of 21st Century Fox, Robert Thomson, CEO, Newscorp, Uday Shankar, CEO Star India, David Zaslav, President and CEO, Discovery Communications and Michael Lynton, CEO Sony Entertainment, with whom Modi had another roundtable meeting on media, technology and communications, the growth story for India.
All of them conveyed to Modi that India is the biggest market for them in terms of the phenomenal growth in entertainment channels, in terms of the youth wanting more such content, the need for speedier digitization of the Indian systems, and their keen interest in expanding their presence. Shane Smith, CEO, Vice Media, said he wanted 4G connectivity to be rolled out as soon as possible because this is the bandwidth that they need for their programs and their content to be rolled out and for it to reach people as fast as possible.
Communications University
Officials said the Prime Minister observed that the changes in technology in media in recent times have led to an enormous democratization of knowledge and that he saw a key role for digital technology in strengthening democracy and in India’s development narrative. He said the world is now a technology-driven society where growth of digital infrastructure is as important as the growth of physical infrastructure. “The Prime Minister suggested to the CEOs that India represents both the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge for them and urged them to keep regional languages in mind as they developed their content and as they firm their investment plans for India,” Swarup said.
Modi gave a number of suggestions to the media titans on how media and communications companies could be part of India’s development story. “One idea that he gave was that if together we could set up some kind of a communications university in India, a chair in communications study, which could then help further progress in the areas that they are really interested in,” Swarup said.
Later Modi held a dinner meeting with as many as 42 of the world’s leading CEOs of Fortune 500 companies whose total net worth is believed to be close to $5 trillion. The meeting was attended among others by Ajay Banga, President and CEO of MasterCard and Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo and Dinesh Paliwal, President and CEO of Harman International Industries, Lockheed Martin Chairman and CEO Marillyn Hewson, Ford President and CEO Mark Fields, IBM Chairman Ginni Rometty, and Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris.
Report Card
Paliwal described the event to reporters as a “report card” reflecting a great transparency of the Modi Government.
By and large, officials said, the mood was upbeat and there was general consensus that the Prime Minister is effecting changes in India. “The only thing that all the CEOs said they wanted was that the government should make all the changes faster. I think the overall message came through and the Prime Minister did assure them that he was committed and that fundamentally he believes in deregulation, he believes that the government should allow the private sector space to develop and that he is for predictable transparent accountable governance,” Swarup said.
India’s Ambassador to the U.S. Arun K. Singh said, “It came through clearly that most people felt that this was a very good moment for India in the global context. If you looked at economic trends globally, this was the unique opportunity for India to move ahead, attract capital, and fine moment in terms of market access and ability to produce both for domestic (markets) and for exports.”
Officials earlier indicated the seriousness with which Modi is going to pursue his goals while in the U.S. “When in California the Prime Minister will have a look at some of the inventions that Google is making in the field of healthcare, in the area of smart grid, and of course how Google can use its technological innovations to help power our Skill India and Digital India programs,” Swarup said during a press briefing Sept. 23 that was attended by Ambassador Singh and India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Asoke Mukherjee.
“When the Prime Minister visits Google in California, there will be a hackathon in which about 150 to 200 Indian-American tech-entrepreneurs will be working for 24 hours continuously in partnership with 100 to 150 Indian software programmers working at the same time in India to develop some apps or software related to Digital India and Skill India which then can be released for use by the people,” Singh said in response to a question.
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