IBM CEO And Indian Prime Minister Talk About Yoga … And Unspecified Further Investment

IBM’s new CEO Shri Arvind Krishna has chatted over a video conference with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and pledged further investment in the nation.

Modi thanked IBM for employing over 100,000 Indians and introducing an AI curriculum to the nation’s schools. He also “explored the possibilities of creating India specific AI based tools in the healthcare sector and development of better models for disease prediction and analysis” and “noted that IBM can play an important role in taking forward the healthcare vision.”

Krishna praised India’s new “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” self-reliance policy and “briefed PM about IBM's huge investment plans in India.”

But the exact extent and nature of that investment was not revealed and the official account of the chat indicates it was more of a friendly affair than tied to any particular initiative.

So why bother spending prime ministerial time on the chat? It is a source of considerable pride in India that some expats have risen to positions of great influence in the technology industry. Krishna hails from Dehradun, a northern city that’s not in the fifty-most-populous towns in the nation, yet has still made it to the very top of the technology industry’s most storied company. For Modi, chatting to Krishna the week after meeting Google CEO Sundar Pichai – another expat – is therefore a demonstration that his Rolodex is in fine shape and his reach is long. ®

The pair also covered “data security, cyber attacks, concerns around privacy, and health benefits of Yoga,” according to the Indian Press Information Bureau.

Investment attraction to services sector