Doing business in India was "tough": Pompeo on his Bengaluru days

Ahead of his visit to India, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has revealed that he had a "tough" time as a businessman in Chennai and Bengaluru while trying to sell machine parts for the aerospace industry in the country.

Pompeo said this during his address to a Washington audience that included Google's Indian-American CEO Sundar Pichai and top corporate executives from India and the US at the India Ideas Summit on Wednesday.

Pompeo will travel to India, Sri Lanka, Japan and South Korea from June 24 to 30.

Responding to a question, Pompeo said that as a businessman, before he ran for the Congress, he had spent some time in Chennai and Bangalore trying to sell products to the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), India's leading public sector aerospace and defence company.

"I didn't tell the story I did business in India when I before I lost my mind and ran for Congress, I ran a small business that made machine parts for the aerospace industry.

"And I spent a fair amount of time in Bangalore and in Chennai working with HAL with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to sell products we a small joint venture," the 55-year-old Secretary of State said at the event hosted by the US-India Business Council