India accounted for about 20 percent of the world’s GDP in 1700. By the time the United States was born in 1776, the British East India Company ruled much of India and had a monopoly over all imports and exports in India via a mandate issued by the British Crown. In fact one of the CEOs of East India company was the English General who lost the last battle of the American Revolution, Lord Charles Earl Cornwallis; he is buried in  Ghazipur near what is now Varanasi, India.

In the 19^th century, British rulers did not allow Indians to form a company unless they had a British partner. American companies only entered India in the 1900’s with the predecessor of General Electric and Citibank.  Abbott, the pharma company established an Indian business prior to the First World Wat.

When India became independent in 1947, almost no Indian companies did business in the United States and very few American companies  had found any interest in India. But the Indian Air Force did buy some American aircraft early on. Johnson & Johnson set up shop in India in 1947 and now has over a billion dollars in sales.

In the late 1990s Indian software companies made an entry to the United States to help solve the “Y2K” bug embedded in most software. Today, western IT and software giants such as Accenture, Adobe, Cap Gemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Qualcomm employ millions of Indians in cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Noida and Pune.  Conversely Indian providers such as  HCL, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro have billions of dollars in revenue largely from their American operations and employ  hundreds of thousands of Americans in additions to millions of Indians.

An Indian company, Hindalco, is the largest producer of aluminum on the world through its North American operations (Novelis). Most Americans consume generic pharmaceuticals made in India and many of those Indian pharma companies have operations and subsidiaries in the United States.

Today, opportunities abound for all kinds of American companies who wish to export their products to India. In the last 20 years India has risen from being a Top 25 trading partner to a Top 11 trading partner to the United States.