Time For A Trump Visit?

THE TAKE 

US Thrives On Indian Talent. It's Time For Donald Trump To Take Note

There is always irony within irony. Just as US president Donald Trump was expressing his displeasure over confidante Elon Musk’s move to set up a manufacturing base in India in a television interview, tech giant Google said it was opening its largest and fourth campus in India, on the edge of East Bengaluru, with a seating capacity of 5,000 employees.

Spread over a 1.6 million square feet area, the Google office — also one of the largest in the world — has been named Ananta, which translates into limitless in Sanskrit. 

Trump argued in that interview that high tariffs create significant barriers for American businesses looking to enter the Indian market, forcing them to manufacture domestically rather than export from the US. "If he (referring to Musk) built the factory in India, that's okay, but that's unfair to us. It's very unfair," Trump said.

Tesla will set up a manufacturing base in India not out of choice it appears but because domestic policy which has already been considerably twisted to favour the company, forces the company to do so. 

Exactly like all other auto companies who have come to India beginning with the Japanese Suzuki in 1981 with some help and Korea’s Hyundai in 1996 without much help.

Trump’s tariff tirades are of course focused on manufactured goods which are more tangible and also have a direct correlation to jobs or the perception of them. However, the cost economics are not at all clear even if manufacturing were to be dragged back into the US. 

America Leans On India

A drug manufacturer told me that the cost of conversion of active pharmaceutical ingredients or APIs into tablets for an Indian company is a fraction of the cost of an American producer. He said he could not imagine manufacturing moving to the US, unless at a substantially higher cost to consumers there.

But even as Trump continues to rant and rave at the world pulling out new tariff plans and threats from thin air, American corporations continue to lean on Indian brain power and talents to build and grow their global and American businesses.

Google, which has over 10,000 employees in India across five cities, said Ananta is one of its most ambitious ground-up developments. Increasingly, we have been building from India, for the world, said Google.

Google is not of course alone. There are over 1,700 global capability centres (GCC) in India employing over 1.5 million directly and many more are being set up, literally by the day, large and small.

Powering it is India’s sheer workforce which represents 28% of the global STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) workforce, and 23% of the global software engineering talent. This has led to global MNCs setting up back offices and R&D hubs in India through GCCs.

GCC is a general and a specific term. For instance, Hyderabad is increasingly seeing GCCs in the life sciences space, given its own pharma manufacturing and research ecosystem.

Many of these GCCs in India house global roles, for example in healthcare companies like Astra Zeneca and Novartis.

These are not traditional technology roles but critical technology combined with business roles, including in research-intensive areas like healthcare.

Trump’s Limited View

The rise of GCCs did not happen overnight and is not exactly breaking news but a continuing testament to the limitations of the Trump view of economic control and domination.

So while Tesla will try to export cars to India, Google or Nvidia or Amazon and hundreds of other American companies have been embracing India and its talent and potential quite literally for decades even without being asked.

Google said the grounds at its campus feature extensive landscaping and walking and jogging paths — ideal for casual meetings and peaceful breaks. 

Perhaps the president should visit and spend some time there and sync with the opportunity that India has to offer and see for himself how globalisation has really delivered for America’s biggest and best, and continues to.

The name of the campus Ananta or limitless can apply to space as much as thought.

CORE NUMBER

Rs 84,247 crore

This is the total value erosion of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) holdings over the past 1.5 months, as the stock market downturn dragged its investment portfolio down by 5.7%. As of December 2024, LIC’s holdings in listed companies were valued at Rs 14.72 trillion, but by February 2025, this dropped to Rs 13.87 trillion. The biggest contributors to this decline include ITC, L&T, and the State Bank of India, which together accounted for 29% of LIC’s total losses. Other major stocks such as TCS, HDFC Bank, and Adani Ports also saw significant declines. However, these losses are mark-to-market, meaning LIC has not realised actual financial losses unless it sells these shares.

THE CORE x TALENT SKILLVARSITY

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👥 THE TEAM

✍️ Zinal Dedhia, Salman SH | ✂️ Rohini Chatterji | 🎧 Joshua Thomas