Prime Minister Modi has taken the Silicon Valley by storm and CNBC-TV18’s Kritika Saxena caught up with Rohit Bansal, Co-Founder of Snapdeal and asked him about the mood among leaders at Silicon Valley, overall startup businesses and plans for listing.
Advertisement
The company will work with Indian Railways and RailTel to bring high-speed Wi-Fi to 100 of the busiest stations in India before the end of 2016, Google said in a statement.
“All those who are familiar with India, if you look all over the world you’ll see civilisation has generally developed and settled along rivers”, Mr Modi said.
Modi has been criticized for not doing enough to stop 2002 religious riots in Gujarat that killed about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, when he was chief minister of the state.
Modi also sought to tell Zuckerberg that India had other things to offer as well.
Mostly Sikh protesters calling on Modi to answer for his rights record temporarily blocked one of Facebook’s entrances.
After a pause, he slowly regained his composure, observing, “It’s not just the case with Narendra Modi, mothers in India sacrifice their entire lives for their children”.
The Prime Minister’s visit to Silicon Valley has not received as much attention in the USA media as the Pope’s visit or parleys between US and Chinese presidents.
Taking a dig at the social media restrictions in China, Modi said to the cheers of the tech savvy crowd: “The internet services are different in China”.
In an effort to push Digital India initiative, chipmaker Qualcomm said it will invest $150 million for Indian start-ups in the mobile and internet-of-everything (IoE) ecosystem.
Among the audience was Sudeep Padiyar, employed with a tech firm in Santa Clara, who said he was impressed by Modi’s speech but was expecting more questions.
Modi is also slated to attend a summit, organised by Obama, on countries that contribute to United Nations peacekeeping forces.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Modi also attacked the Congress President’s son-in-law Robert Vadra over alleged corruption charges during his address to the Indian community in California today.
Advertisement
The first day of Modi’s West Coast visit included a visit to Tesla Motors and a meeting with Chief Executive Elon Musk, where the two discussed renewable energy, which Modi is eager to bring to India.
