In Washington yesterday, five prominent American CEOs had 15-minute meetings with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and each was gushing with enthusiasm for expanding their role in India.
The founder and CEO of Blackstone (NYSE: BX), world’s largest private equity firm, exclaimed that India is their best market worldwide. The company is the largest real estate owner in India, has invested over $60 billion in the country and Stephen Schwarzmann promised to invest another $40 billion by 2026. Blackstone is excited about the country’s National Asset Monetization Program and expects to be a player in the infrastructure boom.
Blackstone’s diverse investments in India include IT player Mphasis, Nexus Malls, edu-tech company Aakash, specialty glass packaging maker Piramal Glass, global leader in recyclable packaging tubes Essel Propack, affordable housing finance company Aadhar and many others. Its portfolio companies employ over 65,000 Indians and it is among the ten largest companies in India.
Pictured above is Mark Widmar, CEO of Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar (Nasdaq:FLSR), which is investing $684 million to build a factory in Tamil Nadu in southern India. Unique among the world’s ten largest solar manufacturers for being the only U.S.-headquartered company, for not using a crystalline silicon (c-Si) semiconductor, and for not manufacturing in China, First Solar produces its thin film PV modules using a fully integrated, continuous process under one roof and does not rely on Chinese c-Si supply chains. The planned facility is projected to have a nameplate capacity of 3.3 gigawatts.
Upon meeting Widmar, Prime Minister Modi, whose home state of Gujarat was a solar pioneer, declared, “The subject of solar energy is very close to my heart, because it concerns the future of our planet.” In a short interview, Widmar said he plans to be a key player in helping India meets its Paris Climate Accord commitment of 430 GW by 2030.
Adobe began engineering operations in Noida, outside New Delhi, in the 1990s led by fellow IIT Kanpur alumnus, Naresh Gupta. Today, the company has over 6,500 employees across development centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore in addition to Noida. Its software is used by millions of Indian scientists, engineers, artists, designers and more. Its global CEO is an Indian American Shantanu Narayen, who called his India team the company’s “secret weapon.” Adobe engineers in India create new products from concept all the way to final delivery.
Narayen said that many of his Indian employees are actualizing Artificial Intelligence capabilities across all their products and dozens of patents are filed from work done in India every year. Adobe is an active supporter of the startup ecosystem in India and Narayen is particularly excited to see that startups from India now have global ambitions.
One of India’s most spectacular changes has been the rise of mobile phones and now smart phones. California’s Qualcomm has led the way in this telecom revolution. Today, virtually every Indian has a mobile device, and the country is the largest market for smart phones in the world. So it is no surprise that CEO Cristiano Amon was among the guests to meet Narendra Modi.
The company has over 12,000 Indians on its payroll at locations in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Noida. Amon expressed keenness to work with India in areas such as 5G, semiconductors, and Digital India.
Qualcomm Ventures invests significantly in India. Investments include MindTickle (sales readiness software and sale enablement solutions); ideaForge Technology (customizable drones for defense, homeland security and enterprise); boAT (wireless audio and wearable devices); Locus (smart supply chain solutions); Shadowfax (logistics and delivery solutions); Bounce (smart mobility solution in transportation); and Stellapps (IoT for dairy farming). It has gone into other fields as well, vitals monitoring (Dozee), safe vaccine transportation (Blackfrog), low cost/portable ventilation (Biodesign), and contactless disease detection (Adiuvo).
Another California executive to meet the Prime Minister, is my friend Dr. Vivek Lall of General Atomics (and formerly of Boeing and Lockheed). India will be acquiring 30 Predator B drones — 10 each for the Navy, Air Force and Army for $3 billion. Also known as ‘MQ-9B Reaper’ by the U.S. Air Force, the Predator B is a Remotely Piloted Aircraft. It has an endurance of 48 hours and a range of over 6,000 nautical miles. It carries a maximum payload of 2 tons. It comes with nine hard-points, capable of carrying sensors and laser-guided bombs besides air-to-ground missiles. India may deploy these in Ladakh on the China border, and in the Arabian Sea to monitor Pakistan.
Lall previously sold Boeing Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft to the Indian Navy. Here is what he had to say.
