Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently embarked on his second economic development mission to Mumbai and New Delhi, aiming to further promote Indian investment in Texas and to strengthen a longstanding economic and cultural relationship.
From January 19th to 29th, Texas Governor Greg Abbott led an economic development mission to India, making it his second such visit to the country. During the ten-day trip, his delegation visited Mumbai and New Delhi to meet with Indian business leaders, discuss deepening ties between Indian and Texan tech and energy industries, and promote the developing economic and cultural partnership between India and Texas.
Mumbai
Governor Abbott began his trip by visiting Mumbai to connect with executives from India's largest tech and IT companies: Infosys, Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Group, and Wipro. The Texas delegation discussed proposals for the companies to expand their presence in Texas’ energy, manufacturing, aerospace, IT, and technology industries, underscoring the Lone Star State’s commitment to investment and diversity in those fields. The governor previously met with Infosys and Wipro executives during his 2018 mission to India; in a joint statement with the latter, he announced the opening of the company’s new Texas Technology Center in Plano, Texas.
After touting Texas’ film industry at a dinner with Bollywood film industry leaders, Governor Abbott continued into the second day with a tour of the campus of Indian construction and tech conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T). There, he met with company executives to discuss plans for L&T’s expansion of their engineering and manufacturing operations in Plano and Houston. He then participated in a jersey exchange with the Mumbai Cricket Association, gifting them jerseys from two of Texas’ two new professional cricket teams: the Texas Super Kings and the Dallas Wolves. Owing to the state’s large South Asian diaspora, Texas has seen a meteoric rise in the popularity of the sport over the summer of 2023. On July 13th, Governor Abbott presented jerseys to the Texas Super Kings at their inaugural home match at Grand Prairie Stadium in Grand Prairie, Texas – the first-ever professional Major League Cricket match in the United States.
Back in Mumbai, the Texas delegation concluded the day by participating in a business industry roundtable and reception hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, where Governor Abbott discussed the ways in which India and Texas can continue to grow their trade and economic partnerships.
New Delhi
Governor Abbott and his delegation kicked off the New Delhi leg of their economic development mission by meeting with executives of Adani Group – a major Indian conglomerate with subsidiaries in various energy sectors – and highlighting Texas’ leadership in the fields of wind and solar power. The delegation also joined executives from the National Association of Software and Service Companies to discuss further bolstering India’s tech presence in Texas, capping off the day by attending a reception hosted by the US Commercial Service in India.
During the delegation’s second day in New Delhi, Governor Abbott participated in the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum and met with executives of HCLTech – an Indian information technologies firm – as well as the Minister of Commerce and Industry of India to discuss Indian foreign direct investment in Texas. On top of his main talking points about enhancing India-Texas trade and commerce, the governor also noted Texas’ Tier 1 research universities and workforce training programs at community colleges as additional business development attractants.
On the final day of the mission, Governor Abbott delivered a keynote address at the 7th India-US Forum hosted by the Ministry of External Affairs and presented a broad overview of the mission’s aims. His speech highlighted impressive statistics on India-Texas trade relations, such as Texas exports accounting for 28% of all US exports to India and Indian investments into Texas over the last decade totaling $1.4 billion.
India-Texas Relations
This mission comes as the latest in a longstanding economic and cultural relationship between India and Texas. In March 2018, Governor Abbott embarked on a similar trip to India where he visited Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Agra and met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi over economic cooperation and trade opportunities. Modi returned the favor in September 2019 and featured as the titular guest in “Howdy, Modi! Shared Dreams, Bright Futures,” a Houston rally for Texas’s Indian community that entailed cultural programming and a keynote address on national security, trade, and US-India relations.
Beyond state visits, other important developments in the India-Texas relationship include the unveiling of a monument dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi in Houston’s Mahatma Gandhi District in 2015 and the handing over of papers denoting India’s first US crude oil purchase from the then Indian Ambassador to the United States Navtej Sarna to Governor Abbott in 2017. While in between meeting days on the mission, on January 26th, the governor publicly acknowledged Republic Day, a holiday commemorating the adoption of the Constitution of India. He also mentioned in his address at the 7th India-US Forum that there are over 540,000 Indian Americans living in Texas; of Texas’ 1.9 million Asian American residents, they constitute the largest ethnic group in that category. With such robust business, trade, and cultural linkages between India and Texas, Governor Abbott’s economic development mission will certainly be followed by future visits as part of this increasingly important transcontinental partnership.
Vincent Zhang is a Spring 2024 Young Professional at the East-West Center in Washington. He is a senior at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, pursuing a B.S.F.S. in International Politics with a concentration in Foreign Policy.