Last Monday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook sat with US President Donald Trump in the White House State Dining Room and talked about immigration, improving digital services and cyber-security. Their picture, where the two, along with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, looked uneasy, went viral on social media. Six days later, Bezos, Cook and 19 more CEOs, including Google’s Sundar Pichai, sat with visiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Willard Hotel’s ballroom to discuss India’s economic reform and share their experiences dealing with the Indian as well as the current Trump administration. In the end, according to Gopal Baglay, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, the CEOs expressed support for the Make in India and Digital India, Start Up India and other flagship initiatives of the government. This is an important signal, in the light of Modi’s America-first policy being at odds with the Make in India campaign. Modi reportedly told the CEOs that 7,000 reforms had been implemented for ease of business in India. He also took credit for the implementation of the GST. “The implementation of the landmark initiative of GST could be a subject of studies in US business schools,” he said, according to Baglay.
