<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

NLight officials join Locke in India

Commerce secretary is leading a trade mission to build relationships

By Gordon Oliver, Columbian Business Editor
Published: February 7, 2011, 12:00am

To read blog updates this week from the nLight executives about the trade mission, go to the Innovate Clark County website.

With the world focused on China’s powerhouse economy, some companies are looking to India as the next awakening giant worthy of greater attention.

This week, executives from 24 U.S. businesses including Vancouver-based nLight are visiting India as part of a high-tech trade mission led by U.S. Commerce Secretary and former Washington Gov. Gary Locke. The delegates arrived in New Delhi on Sunday and will work through a heavy schedule of business appointments and social functions in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai before departing on Friday.

It’s the first trip to India for nLight president and chief executive officer Scott Keeney, who is joined by nLight chief technical officer Jason Farmer and microlaser manager Anmol Nijjar. The three men have set up separate meetings with customers and hope to find new markets for their company’s high-power semiconductor lasers and specialty optic fibers that are used in industrial, medical, and defense products.

To read blog updates this week from the nLight executives about the trade mission, go to the Innovate Clark County website.

Keeney said his decade-old company’s sales in Asia are strong, but India so far is a small market for nLight. With the top U.S. trade official leading the way, the trade mission should be an entrée to cultivating valuable business ties, he said.

“You have to be out there,” he said. “In every culture, relationships matter a lot.”

The high-profile mission includes a possible meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a reception hosted by U.S. Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer. Also scheduled is a luncheon with Indian Minister of Defense A.K. Antony.

The Commerce Department says that the mission will help build on the growth in exports by U.S. companies to India, which rose by 17 percent in 2010 from the previous year.

It is the second trade mission for Locke as Commerce Secretary. He led a mission focused on clean energy business development to China and India last May.

Other companies

Other metro-area businesses on the trade mission are FLIR Systems Inc. of Wilsonville, Ore., and NuScale Power of Portland.

Other companies with Northwest connections include Boeing Corp., based in Chicago but with major production in the Puget Sound region and a parts plant in Gresham, Ore., and North Star Aerospace and Aero Controls, both of Auburn.

Bart Phillips, chief executive of the Columbia River Economic Development Council in Vancouver, predicted that India will become just as important as China as a purchaser of U.S. goods and services. “It’s a huge market, but it’s a much different market than China,” he said.

Already, Phillips noted, Sharp Laboratories of America, based in Camas, has a sister company in Bangalore, called Sharp Software Development India, that is instrumental to its product development work.

Loading...
Columbian Business Editor