India is new land of opportunity for US industry giants

The US-India Business Council (USIBC) has already invested $28 billion in India, with $45 billion more on the way, according to a report by India Times.

Now giants like Paypal, Target and Mastercard are making their moves.

“A partnership between the American capital and innovation, with Indian human resources and entrepreneurship can prove a powerful combination,” said India`s Prime Minister Modi at the USIBC Gala.

While members of USIBC have indeed invested enormous funds, like PepsiCo who announced their plan to invest $5.5 billion in India by 2020, after being established as one of the two main beverage companies, other major enterprises made their moves to benefit of the country’s successful track of entrepreneuriship.

Target Acceleration Program (TAP), a program running successfully since 2013, just announced their fifth batch of launched startups. The batch included Find me a shoe and StoryXpress, the 2 first Indian startups to get fully adopted by the program and Techstars Retail Accelerator in Minneapolis, USA.

Paypal, the leading online payment firm is also on the prowl for dominance in the Indian market. Just yesterday (Wednesday, August 2nd), the company opened 2 new innovation labs in their tech centres in Chennai and Bengaluru. The labs will be focusing on various fields, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT.

“India is a hotbed for innovation given its evolving startup ecosystem, diverse merchant profiles and enormous talent pool. To cater to their needs in the most effective manner, we are delighted to announce the launch of our newest Innovation Lab in India, where the focus will be on fueling new age technology and giving rise to unconventional ideas with the potential to transform the ecosystem we operate in,” said Mike Todasco, Director of Innovation at Paypal to the India times.

Following the demonetization and cashless trends in India, Mastercard worked heavily on innovating the Bharat QR, the first international operable payment system, in cooperation with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Visa and American Express. The system is meant to help boost cashless treatment further by removing the need for card-based POS machines, instead customers can just use their smartphones for banking.

“To date, there are more than 300,000 merchants who have deployed Bharat QR, the world’s first globally interoperable payments solution,” said Ajay Bhalla, President of Global Enterprise Risk & Security at MasterCard to the India Times.

An OECD economic report shows that India is the fastest growing country in the world, with a successfully stable currency since 2013, thanks to the RBI (Reserve Bank of India). The report also shows India’s labor potential, reporting that it’s set to be the youngest country in the world by 2020, with 64% of its population to be in the working age group.

All the previously mentioned motives make USA the lead of a list of developed countries investing heavily in the Indian market. The list also includes, but is not limited to Japan, UK, Germany and UAE.