PM leaves for Silicon Valley on US visit

New York, Sept 26: After hosting a crucial G-4 summit on UN Security Council reforms, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today left for San Jose to begin another crucial part of his US visit with a packed agenda of meetings with Silicon Valley honchos Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and others.

Modi left New York immediately after he hosted the leaders of Brazil, Japan and Germany for the G-4 summit on the long pending UNSC reform process.

During his two-day stay in Silicon Valley, he would begin and conclude his engagements with the Indian-American community, the last one being an address to a crowd of over 18,500 Indian-Americans at the SAP Centre in San Jose.

Sandwiched between the two community events would be Modi's visits to the campuses of Tesla, Facebook and Google where he would hold meetings with the who's who of Silicon Valley – ranging from Apple chief Cook to Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Google, Shantanu Narayen of Adobe, and Facebook's Zuckerberg.

"A working weekend on the West Coast. PM @narendramodi leaves for San Jose for the penultimate leg of his 2 nation tour," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted. After reaching San Jose later in the afternoon, Modi will visit Tesla Motors, followed by meetings with Apple CEO Cook, Microsoft CEO Nadella and Google CEO Pichai.

Modi would also be meeting members of the Sikh and Gujarati communities. On the morning of September 27, Modi will visit the headquarters of social network giant Facebook, where he will hold a town-hall meeting with CEO Zuckerberg.

He will then head to Google, part of his strong push to drive technological innovation in India. Modi will also have bilateral meetings with US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, California Governor Edmund Brown.

He will also meet Salman Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, a free online education platform that produces thousands of video lessons on diverse subjects for students.

He will also attend a roundtable on renewable energy and an India-US start-up meet. The first-ever Indian Prime Minister to visit Silicon Valley after it became the hub of global innovation and entrepreneurship, Modi's first engagement after the community dinner tonight would be to drive down to the Tesla campus.

The Prime Minister decided to visit Silicon Valley to experience and learn firsthand the success story of iconic companies and leaders here with the sole objective of building a similar ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in India, said Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh.

PTI