Doing business in India was "tough": Mike Pompeo on his Bengaluru days
Pompeo will travel to India between June 24-30
Washington, Jun 13: Ahead of his visit to India, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has revealed that he had a "tough" time as a businessman in Chennai and Bengaluru while trying to sell machine parts for the aerospace industry in the country.
Pompeo said this during his address to a Washington audience that included Google's Indian-American CEO Sundar Pichai and top corporate executives from India and the US at the India Ideas Summit on Wednesday.
Pompeo will travel to India, Sri Lanka, Japan and South Korea from June 24 to 30.
Responding to a question, Pompeo said that as a businessman, before he ran for the Congress, he had spent some time in Chennai and Bangalore trying to sell products to the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), India's leading public sector aerospace and defence company.
"I didn't tell the story I did business in India when I before I lost my mind and ran for Congress, I ran a small business that made machine parts for the aerospace industry.
"And I spent a fair amount of time in Bangalore and in Chennai working with HAL with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to sell products we a small joint venture," the 55-year-old Secretary of State said at the event hosted by the US-India Business Council
"I'll tell you what. It was tough," Pompeo told the audience.
Prior to joining the Trump Administration, Pompeo was serving in his fourth term as congressman from Kansas' 4th District.
Prior to his service in Congress, Pompeo founded Thayer Aerospace, where he served as CEO for more than a decade. He later became President of Sentry International, an oilfield equipment manufacturing, distribution, and service company, according to his profile on the website of the US Department of State.
"India was still opening up, it was still figuring its way through, but there was a real value proposition there, and we did well," he said recollecting his experience in India as a businessman.
"When I think about that, when I think about what businesses need when they go to invest in each other's countries, they need stability, they need a set of rules that they can understand, they need to make sure that the efforts that we put forward together from the United States have sufficient bipartisanship, that they won't be whipsawed, as we have elections here," he said.
Though Indo-US relation was moving ahead well, differences remain in some of the key trade and business issues, he acknowledged.
"But we remain open to dialogue and hope our Indian friends will drop their trade barriers and trust in the competitiveness of their exporters and private-sector companies," he said.
Pompeo said the US will also push for the free flow of data across borders not just to help American companies but to protect data and ensure consumer privacy.
The Reserve Bank of India last year issued a new regulation requiring payments companies to store all information about transactions involving Indians solely on computers in the country. The US has criticised the move.
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Centre spent Rs 76.13 lakh on print media ads for RSS centenary, reveals RTI
New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Culture allegedly spent Rs 76.13 lakh on print advertisements marking the 100-year celebrations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), according to a Right to Information (RTI) reply.
The information was sought by RTI activist Ajay Basudev Bose, who filed an application seeking details on expenditure incurred by the ministry for advertisements commemorating the RSS centenary.
Bose shared a picture of the reply from the ministry on his official ‘X’ handle.
“It is informed that an amount of Rs 76,13,129 has been spent on advertisement given in various print media by the Ministry of Culture on the occasion of the completion of 100 years of RSS,” the government’s reply stated.
RTI reply shows Min of Culture Govt of India spent a Whopping Rs 76L,13K,129 on Advertisement in Print Media on occasion of 100 yrs of #RSS
— AJAY Basudev Bose (@AjayBos93388306) April 16, 2026
When Everyone knows RSS is Not Registered & Does not Pay any Tax is it justified to spend Tax Payers Money on such Private event??@RSSorg… pic.twitter.com/dW4IUtdNCg
Bose questioned the expenditure in the post X, “when Everyone knows RSS is Not Registered & Does not Pay any Tax is it justified to spend Tax Payers Money on such Private event??”
Reacting to the development, Karnataka’s IT-BT and Panchayat Raj Minister Priyank Kharge also criticised the spending.
In a post on X, he asked why public money was being used for what he described as a “private ideological project.”
"Modi Sarkar spent Rs 76,13,129 of public money on newspaper advertisements to celebrate 100 years of the RSS. Why is Government spending taxpayers money on an unregistered, non-tax-paying organisation to celebrate their centenary?," he added.
Why is public money being used to serve a private ideological project?
— Priyank Kharge / ಪ್ರಿಯಾಂಕ್ ಖರ್ಗೆ (@PriyankKharge) April 16, 2026
Modi Sarkar spent ₹76,13,129 of public money on newspaper advertisements to celebrate 100 years of the RSS.
Why is Government spending taxpayers money on an unregistered, non-tax-paying organisation to… pic.twitter.com/EoZ6Pim3IM
According to reports, the RSS describes itself as a volunteer-based organisation and has stated that it functions as a body of individuals rather than a registered entity.
Founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925, the organisation is marking its centenary year beginning from Vijaydashami in 2025, with the milestone observed on October 2.
