The News Minute| January 27, 2015| 12.00 am IST
A picture of India's top corporate honchos waiting in a line has gone viral on social media. The picture had Indian businessmen and CEOs lined up for the summit with US President Barack Obama.
The US-Indo CEO forum in New Delhi on Monday evening saw Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Adani Group head Gautam Adani, Mahindra & Mahindra Chairman Anand Mahindra, Bharti Enterprises chief Sunil Mittal, Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani, Infosys Founder Narayanamurthy, Biocon's Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Ratan Tata and Sudhir Mehta of Torrent Pharma present in the summit.
Tata Sons Chairman Cyrus Mistry and David M Cote of Honeywell were co-chair of the high-profile meeting.
Issues related with intellectual property rights, including piracy of films and software, figured prominently during the Forum attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.
SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, ONGC Chairman and Managing Director Dinesh K Sarraf and BHEL head B Prasada Rao also attended the meet.
In his address to the India-US CEO Forum, Obama talked about concerns of the US business including "barriers" and their seeking a "consistent" business policy environment that protects intellectual property rights.
He also mentioned the scale of US business with China.
Obama told the Indo-US Business summit that India accounts for only two percent of US imports and its exports to the country were just over one percent of its total exports. While $100 billion bilateral trade between the two countries was of great importance, the US trade with China was $560 billion, he said.
"The kind of potential (which) might unleash. We got to do that," Obama told the gathering that included business leaders and several ministers of National Democratic Alliance government.
He said Modi agreed with him on the need to realise the untapped potential between the two countries.
Modi said his govenment was working towards ease in business and the immediate target is to bring India among the top 50 from the rear ranks.
Obama said his visit to India was rich in symbolism but also in substance and noted that in an interconnected world, the two were "inextricably linked".
"There is natural convergence between our two countries," he said.