India to displace China as Silicon Valley's next frontier: American daily

Washington, Oct 2: India may soon displace China as Silicon Valley's next frontier, a leading American daily has said, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the headquarters of technology giants Tesla, Facebook and Google.

"China may be a Silicon Valley obsession, but India increasingly is in the conversation and may soon displace its Asian neighbour as tech's next big frontier," the popular USA Today said yesterday in a news dispatch from San Francisco.

The first Indian Prime Minister to visit California in more than three decades, Modi over the weekend spent several hours at the headquarters of iconic companies such as Tesla, Google and Facebook.

He also had interactions with the top CEOs including Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Google's newly-appointed Indian-origin CEO Sundar Pichai. "The near-future was on full display last week," USA Today said referring to Modi's meetings in the Silicon Valley.

"The Facebook of India is Facebook. The Google of India is Google," Beerud Sheth, CEO of Teamchat, a communications app with employees in India and the US, was quoted as saying.

"In China, those services are banned," he said. Silicon Valley, in the southern San Francisco Bay Area, is home to hundreds of start-ups and global technology companies, with Google, Apple and Facebook among the most prominent.

PTI