Sitharaman Pitches India as Global Manufacturing Hub at Chicago Roundtable

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday made a fresh pitch to American investors to set up manufacturing bases and technology centres in India, addressing a high-level business roundtable with investors and executives in Chicago as part of her ongoing six-day tour of the United States and Canada.

Organised by India's Consulate General in Chicago in partnership with the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, the event centred on the theme "Manufacture in India — for India and for the world." Sitharaman told attendees that India's investment case no longer rests on any single sector but on the convergence of scale, talent, infrastructure, technology and a decade of sustained reform.

The pitch: build for the world, not just for India

Sitharaman urged global partners not to treat India merely as a market to serve, but as a platform to build from — whether as a manufacturing base, an innovation hub, a consumer market, or a destination for long-term infrastructure capital. She pointed specifically to opportunities in manufacturing, artificial intelligence and digital services, financial services, infrastructure, food processing, defence and advanced technologies.

"The policy environment is increasingly focused on enabling businesses to invest, manufacture, innovate and expand," she said, according to remarks shared by her ministry.

She highlighted India's Digital Public Infrastructure — Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker, ONDC and the broader India Stack — as having already created platforms operating at population scale, and said the next phase of opportunity lies in building higher-value businesses in AI, semiconductors, electronics and analytics, with the country's Global Capability Centres increasingly evolving into global innovation hubs rather than back-office operations.

GIFT City and infrastructure push

Sitharaman also spotlighted GIFT City, India's international financial services centre, as a gateway connecting global capital with domestic opportunity. She noted the centre now has 1,250 registered entities as of June 2026, spanning banking, fund management, reinsurance, aircraft and ship leasing, and sustainable finance, and invited global institutions to explore it further.

On infrastructure, she pointed to India's dedicated freight corridors, railway modernisation, electrification drive and high-speed rail projects as avenues for global engineering firms, materials suppliers and institutional investors, citing the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund as a commercially driven vehicle for participation.

She added that India's agricultural base and shifting consumption patterns are opening opportunities in food processing, automation, packaging and cold-chain logistics, while government programmes such as Atmanirbhar Bharat and iDEX are building domestic capability in drones and autonomous systems.

Part of a wider diplomatic swing

The Chicago stop follows engagements earlier in the week in Toronto, where Sitharaman discussed trade and financial partnership with her Canadian counterpart, and comes alongside separate outreach by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal for Japanese investment into India. Sitharaman is next scheduled to attend the G20 finance ministers' meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, before travelling to New York later in her trip.

The renewed courtship of American capital comes as global companies reassess supply chains amid geopolitical tension in West Asia and continued volatility in global trade policy, a backdrop Sitharaman explicitly acknowledged in framing India's pitch as a hedge against exactly that kind of uncertainty.

This article is an original editorial summary based on publicly reported information. It has been independently written for publication and does not reproduce content from any single source.