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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Rahul Gandhi joins Haryana Congress leader's 'Sadbhav Yatra' in Gurugram
Gurugram (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday joined the 'Sadbhav Yatra' of Haryana Congress leader Brijendra Singh here.
Gandhi, who is the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, reached Gurugram in the evening and joined the yatra. He also walked some distance with Brijendra, state Congress chief Rao Narender Singh and other leaders.
Huge crowds had turned up for the occasion.
Later, Gandhi proceeded to the venue where he addressed a public gathering.
Leader of Opposition in Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda and other Congress leaders, including Randeep Singh Surjewala, B K Hariprasad, state Congress chief Rao Narender Singh, were also present.
Brijendra Singh had on Thursday said it is a matter of joy for them that Gandhi was joining the 'Sadbhav Yatra' in Gurugram-Badshahpur, "thereby strengthening the Indian National Congress' campaign for brotherhood and harmony".
The 'Sadbhav Yatra' began from Danoda village at Narwana in Jind on October 5, 2025, and has covered 85 of the 90 assembly segments in the state.
The foot march was started by Brijendra Singh, son of Congress veteran Birender Singh, to highlight several national and regional issues.
State Congress chief Rao Narender Singh had asked all party leaders to take part in Friday's event.
Days before his yatra began in October, Brijendra Singh, who narrowly lost the 2024 assembly polls from Jind's Uchana Kalan, accused the ruling BJP of playing "divisive politics" and said that "sadbhav" (harmony) has come under stress in the last decade.
Brijendra Singh was a sitting MP from Hisar for the BJP when he resigned ahead of the 2024 general election and switched over to the Congress. He also alleged that the saffron party creates a wedge in society to achieve its political purpose.
The 'padyatra' has so far covered 85 assembly constituencies in Haryana, traversing more than 2,700 kilometres.
Addressing the public gathering, Brijendra Singh said the yatra is inspired by Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra, where he took the party's vision and values directly to the people of the country.
Singh said the yatra has highlighted issues like "Vote Chori" (vote theft), unemployment, poor law and order situation, agrarian distress, and issues related to government employees, labourers and traders.
"Sadbhav (harmony) and bhaichara (brotherhood), which the BJP is attempting to weaken, are the messages of this yatra," he said, adding that its slogan is "Congress ka haath bhaichara ka saath".
"This yatra is a natural extension of the Bharat Jodo Yatra," Brijendra Singh said.
