M.R. Rangaswami, an Indian-American venture capitalist and entrepreneur based in San Francisco, California, has been appointed as Tamil Nadu’s ‘Investment Ambassador’ by the Indian state's chief minister M.K. Stalin, India West reported on 26 November.
An investor who was brought up in Chennai, Rangaswami co-founded Sand Hill Group, which his own website describes as "one of the earliest angel investment firms."
In 2007, Rangaswami co-founded Corporate Eco Forum (CEF), an organisation to provide, for Fortune and Global 500 companies, a "year-round safe, neutral space for influential executives to exchange best practice, collaborate, and innovate around driving sustainable value creation and innovation", according to the CEF website.
Then five years later, in 2012, Rangaswami founded Indiaspora, whose objective is to unite the Indian diaspora and use its success create an impact of global proportions.
In 2013, during Barack Obama's second term, Indiaspora hosted the first-ever Indian American ball for the White House and the President of the United States.
More than a thousand Indian Americans joined politicians and policymakers to celebrate the accomplishments of the three million Indian Americans in the country.
The announcement by the Stalin government of Tamil Nadu to appoint Rangaswami as 'Investment Ambassador' was welcomed by prominent NRIs like Kishor Mehta, who is the chairman of the American Multi Ethnic Coalition.
Mehta stated that Tamil Nadu had found a lot of success recently in attracting global investment recently, and Rangaswami was the right man to take the state forward in this field, NRI Vision reported.
Dr. VGP, the president of the World Federation of Tamil Youth, an organisation based in Chicago, also congratulated Stalin on appointing Rangaswami and even went on to say that Tamil Nadu will soon become India’s most industrialised state under Rangaswami.
Finally, Neil Khot, the national chairman of the Indian American Business Coalition, congratulated the 'excellent' Rangaswami, saying that the latter is a man who can make things happen, the India West report added.
(With inputs from India West and NRI Vision)
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