Live updates:

10.45 am: Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways, Shipping, Pon Radhakrishnan arrives. He greets Mr Paneerselvam and other MPs.

10.40 am: Minister for Finance and Public Works Department O. Paneerselvam arrives at GIM 2015.

Minister for Finance and Public Works Departments O Paneerselvam arrives. Photo: The Hindu

10.30 am: Chief Minister Jayalalithaa will inaugurate the two-day event. Union Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will also give an address. For the full list of the day's itinerary and the key delegates scheduled to speak later in the afternoon, click here.

10.25 am:

The venue is slowly filling up. Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

10.20 am: Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing director of Mahindra Group says, "We are an old investor in the State. I'm here as an ambassador for TN and give a testimony of benefits of investing here."

Interesting snippet about Mr Mahindra: He says the State is home to him as he studied at Lawrence Lovedale, Ooty.

10.10 am: HCL Founder Shiv Nadar tells The Hindu, "I belong to this place and glad to be here. Our investments are a continous process. This gim will give lot of momentum to the State."

10.05 am: The delegates arrive one by one at the venue, reports Sangeetha Kandavel.

The delegates arriving at the venue. Photo: G. Ananthakrishnan

10.00 am: HCL Founder Shiv Nadar greets Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing director of Mahindra Group.

9.50 am: A peek into the Chennai Trade Centre Convention hall, waiting for the inauguration of GIM 2015.

The Chennai Trade Centre Convention Hall is abuzz with excitement. Photo: G. Ananthakrishnan

9.40 am: But political parties in Tamil Nadu like the DMDK and the PMK are still not sold on the idea of the Meet, saying it is nothing but a last-ditch attempt by the State government to make up for its failures of four-and-half-years. Read more.

9.30 am: A few months ago, State Industries Minister P. Thangamani had said, “I would like to point out that Nokia did face some problems in the State but it was not because of the State government. But because of the retrospective taxes, which were imposed on companies by the previous government at the Centre.”

9.15 am: “The manufacturing output [of the GSDP] in Tamil Nadu which was 20 per cent in 2004-05 is now 16.6 per cent,” says one industrialist. The reason? An official from an automobile firm blames labour problems. Power was also a constraint for industrialists some time ago, but the situation has improved gradually in the last couple of years.

9.00 am: This event is crucial for Tamil Nadu for a variety of reasons, the topmost being the heavy competition with other states such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal to attract the bulk of investments in India. Our business correspondent Sangeetha Kandavel writes.

Read — The Hindu's curtain raiser for GIM 2015.

8.55 am: “Our government is committed to making Tamil Nadu, a new growth model, among Indian States,” Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said in her invitation to the participants. The meet is seen as an opportunity for Ms. Jayalalithaa to prove a political point to her opponents ahead of the Assembly elections next year.

8.50 am: The main players in this grand event —

Participants:
Tamil Nadu government and 3000+ delegates from 9 partner countries and 30 non-partner countries
When:
September 9 & 10
2015
Where:
Chennai Trade Centre
Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Target:
Rs 1 lakh crore investment
(US$ 16 billion)
Partner countries

    South Korea Japan Australia Canada France Italy Russia UK Singapore

Some of the top players from India likely to attend:
Chanda Kochhar
CEO, ICICI Bank
Shiv Nadar
Founder, HCL
B Ashok
Chairman, IOC
Sajjan Jindal
Chairman and MD, JSW Group
B.K. Goenka,
Vice Chairman and MD, Welspun Group
Raghupati Singhania,
Chairman and MD, JK Tyre & Industries
Industrial sectors

    » Automobiles
    » Engineering
    » Aerospace
    » Agro and Food
    » Chemicals
    » Electronic
    » Hardware
    » Infrastructure
    » IT and ITES
    » Pharma
    » Skill
    » Leather
    » Textile
    » Services