President to Meet Leading Silicon Valley CEOs on Friday

New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee will on Friday interact with leading Silicon Valley chief executive officers, entrepreneurs, technologists and venture capitalists here.

The purpose of the interactive session with the president is to reiterate the government's commitment to make the country the hub of innovation, design and start-ups, an official statement said.

The event is being held on the eve of the 'Start-up India' initiative to be launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday.

"It is expected that this interaction will bolster the start-up initiative of government of India and be of inspiration to the entrepreneurs," a press release issued by Rashtrapati Bhavan said.

Silicon Valley, which falls under San Fransisco in the United States of America, is a hub of Information Technology-based companies and others.

Among those expected to participate in the event include Venktesh Shukla, President, TIE; Suhas Patil, CEO, Cradle Technologies; Krishna Yarlagadda, President, Imagination Technologies; Adil Adi, CEO, World Link; Adam Neumann, Founder, WeWork; Sarvajana Dwivedi, Co-founder & CEO, Pearl Therapeutics and Kanwal Rekhi, General Partner, Inventus Capital, among others.

"These entrepreneurs have made immense contribution to the emergence and evolution of the high technology knowledge sectors of India and catalysed job creation through start-ups, IT, R&D and innovation hub," the release said.

The 'Start-up India' initiative aims at fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation by creating an ecosystem that is conducive for growth of Start-ups. The objective is that India must become a nation of job creators instead of being a nation of job seekers, it said.