Investor’s social media post on India gets PM Modi’s attention: ‘Love your optimism’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday lauded Indian-American entrepreneur and investor Balaji S Srinivasan for his optimism about the investment environment in India.

Investing in India is improving India, Balaji wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that he likes to invest in India and Indians because there is growth potential in Bharat. The investor made a long post supporting his argument, which got a nod from the PM who shared Balaji’s post and wrote: “I love your optimism and will add — the people of India are trendsetters and trailblazers when it comes to innovation. We welcome the world to invest in our nation. India won’t disappoint.”

“If you see a startup growing, does that mean it doesn’t have any flaws? That it’s the best in the world? That you’re going to use it for everything right away? No, of course not. But you might start using it, and putting money into it, and talking about it to your friends. And that’s how I think about India — an ancient civilization that’s simultaneously like a startup country,” Balaji wrote.

Balaji’s post was a reply to a social media user who called him the ‘biggest cheerleader of India who does not stay in India’. “It’s not about being a ‘cheerleader’ who has to ‘stay’ in a place to invest in it — imagine if every business had to be funded solely by neighbours down the street. Instead, it’s about being an international investor looking for the best talent around the world — and finding quite a lot of it in India,” Balaji replied.

In his long post, the investor wrote that one of India’s greatest strengths is diaspora. “Indians are willing and able to move anywhere. Westerners mostly aren’t willing to move, because they still think their societies are the only places that are “First World”. And the Chinese increasingly aren’t able to move, because they’re restricted from any countries where the Chinese state lacks hard power,” he wrote.