Business
For the United States, India is now its ninth largest trading partner. For India, the USA is its top trading
partner. The largest portion of this trade happens with California on so many dimensions:
India is the largest market in the world for almonds grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California. India also imports California pistachios (pistas), walnuts, and fruits.
India is the largest operator of Boeing C-17 Military Transport Aircraft, many of which were built in Long Beach California. From San Diego, California, General Atomics made a sale of $4 billion of the most sophisticated armed drones to India (MQ9 Reaper).
There is vibrant trade in jewelry, diamonds, textiles.
Almost 25% of Cupertino California based Apple’s iPhone, iPads and computers are assembled in India amounting to tens of billions of dollars.
India is a big market for scrap metal and paper exported from the Port of Los Angeles.
From Hollywood, California Netflix is a major streaming player in India with over 12 million paid subscribers. Sony Pictures and TV (Culver City CA), Disney (Burbank, CA), Paramount (Los Angeles, CA) and Warner Bros have a good business in India.
In the Bay Area, California, companies such as Adobe, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Oracle are serving billions of Indians and making large profits from India. At the same times these companies have employed hundreds of thousands if professionals in India, plus many thousands of Indian American citizens, green card holders and H1B visa persons. Many top executives of these companies are of Indian origin.
Across the universities of California (private and state-owned), Indian students are the largest section of foreign students since 2020, paying full out of state tuitions.
Embedded inside most Global 2000 companies with staff in California are over half a million highly paid Indian professionals – some as employees other on contract via Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro