Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday met with 10 top captains of Indian industry who will represent the country at the India-US CEO Forum to be officially inaugurated during his upcoming visit to Washington.

These corporate honchos, who represent a wide spectrum of industries that range from energy and petrochemicals to sunrise areas like biotechnology and IT - will interact with their American counterparts to further India-US economic ties.

The first meeting of the 20-member forum - 10 from either side - is scheduled July 18, which will be addressed by Manmohan Singh soon after a formal reception for him at the White House and talks with President George W. Bush. Manmohan Singh will be visiting the US from July 18-20.

"Today the prime minister discussed issues on how Indian companies can play a larger role in Indo-US economic relations and step up foreign investment into the country," said Sanjaya Baru, media advisor to the prime minister.

Representatives of Indian industry told Manmohan Singh that India was in the eye of the world and the boardrooms of big corporates were looking at the country with renewed interest.

They said they would work with American CEOs to effectively tap the wide potential India offers to foreign investors.

The institutionalised forum will also do away with the practice for the past 15 years or so to appoint professional lobby groups to articulate India's position on various issues with influential think tanks and policy makers, officials said.

In the past, lobby firms like Edward von Kloberg with an annual retainer fee of $240,000 and Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld for a fee of $600,000 per annum had been hired to advise India and work the halls of US Congress.

The mandate now informally shifts to the 10 American chief executives, some of whom have such clout that they can pick up the phone and speak directly with President Bush, his key administration officials or ranking lawmakers.

The Indian side of the forum includes Ratan Tata of Tata Sons, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Y.C. Deveshwar of ITC, Ashok Ganguly of ICICI OneSource, Deepak Parekh of HDFC and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon.

Its other members are Analjit Singh of Max group, Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Pratap C. Reddy of Apollo Hospitals and Baba Kalyani of Bharat Forge.

The US side includes Paul Hanrahan of AES Power to represent the energy sector, Stanley Warren of Cargil for agriculture and Bill Harrison of JP Morgan Chase and Charles O. Prince of Citibank for financial services.

Additionally, David Coat of Honeywell is for the hi-tech sector, Harold McGraw of McGraw Hill for publishing, Steve Reinemund of Pepsi for retail trade, Thomas J. O'Neill of Parsons for infrastructure, Christopher Rodrigues of Visa for card services and Anne M. Mulcahy of Xerox for manufacturing.