Hours before leaving for the United States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his latest marketing push to hardsell India as a cost-competitive global manufacturing hub on Thursday, in the presence of hundreds of global and Indian business leaders, diplomats, ministers and others. Following up on his Independence Day speech, when he had made an appeal to global manufacturers to "Make in India", Modi, who spoke after nine heads of domestic and global companies endorsed India's credentials as a manufacturing destination, buttressed the need to make India an easier place to do business in.