Cook, Bezos, Pichai gung-ho about India in meet with PM

Apple Inc chief executive Tim Cook on Sunday highlighted the economic impact his company is having on India in a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the iPhone maker seeks deeper access to the world's third-largest smartphone market.

Cook was among several technology executives who met with PM Modi at a business summit in Washington at a time when Apple is targeting the Indian market for revenue growth as its sales in China have slipped.

Apple has asked Indian government officials for a range of tax and policy changes to help build its iPhone assembly work in the country. It is seeking permission to open its own retail stores in India where it currently sells iPhones through resellers.

At his meeting with Modi, Cook said that Apple expected its Indian operations to be run completely from renewable energy within the next six months.

Cook said Indian app developers had created almost 100,000 apps for the App Store in 2016, a growth of 57 per cent over the previous year. The number of people involved in building apps on the iOS platform had touched 740,000 in India. These numbers are reportedly being disclosed for the first time.

Cook also pointed out that the company had started assembling iPhones in the country, the first of which hit the Bengaluru market last week.

Others to heap lavish praise on the prime minister and express keenness about the prospects of the Indian market were Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Cisco's John Chambers.

They stressed how much India had helped build their businesses and the extent to which their companies had contributed to India. After meeting Modi in Washington on Sunday, several committed to further increase their engagement with India, reports today said.

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who has already committed over $5 billion in investment in India, tweeted soon after the meeting that he would continue to invest in the country. "Terrific meeting with Narendra Modi. Always impressed, energised by optimism and invention in India. Excited to keep investing and growing," his tweet said.

Amazon has a large R&D presence and made significant investments in India last year to launch two data centres that offer cloud computing services.

Cisco chairman John Chambers described Modi as one of the world's great leaders, and said he is creating innovative outcomes for win-win partnerships between the US and India. Chambers, who is also chairman of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), tweeted, "As chairman of the @USIBC, I believe India will move from slow follower to fast innovative leader. Tremendous in 3 yrs through Digital India."

A combination of governmental programmes, including Digital India, Smart Cities, Startup India, and Make in India, have generated excitement among global technology players.

Many of the big technology companies, including IBM, Cisco, Accenture, and VMware have been describing India as one of their fastest growing markets in quarterly financial results announcements in recent times. Chief executives of many tech companies have also been visiting India with increasing frequency. On a visit in May, Oracle CEO Safra Catz described the India market as potentially the largest in the world.