WHEN I HEARD Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg say “Namaste India” in Delhi earlier this month, I could feel myself beam from ear to ear.

Zuckerberg was the third high-profile CEO of a US-based firm to have tried his hand at Hindi when in the country. Earlier this year, it was two other corporate top guns — Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's Satya Nadella — who paid a visit to India. This July, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer and author of Lean In Sheryl Sandberg also came to India.

Are these visits by some of the biggest heavyweights in the business world pure coincidence? Not by a long shot. For with time, the way the world views us as a culture and a country is affecting the business strategies of overseas industry giants and foreign policies of other countries.

I recently read an essay “India’s time for growth” by Rich Karlgaard in the August 18, 2014, issue of Forbes Asia. The author was expecting to be welcomed by “the land of dreams and utter dysfunction”.

But customs, in his words was “a breeze”, Terminal 2 was “stunning” and the ride to his hotel took all of 40 minutes. He says, “If the India of five years ago made one worry that a country so gifted in software could never do hardware — or infrastructure — well, it’s time to rethink that image. The ducks are lining up for India. Remember the Zuckerbergs, Nadellas and Bozos.”

It’s not just about reports and numbers, though. A positive change is more than visible in every aspect of the Indian life. It’s a fact brought out interestingly in our interview with Piyush Pandey, who has made a mark in the global advertising world with more than 900 awards!

Pandey not only wears his Indian-ness on his sleeve, his finger on the Indian consumer’s throbbing pulse has given rise to some of the most iconic brand campaigns. The ad maverick’s innate sense of understanding the colloquial, the traditional and the Indianness of everything has put his agency, Ogilvy & Mather India, at the very top of ad agencies in India. In short, he has been instrumental in reclaiming the cool quotient for everything India.

Our Foreign Dispatches section draws attention to how perception towards Indian cinema is changing at great speed. Positive changes are afoot in the Indian society, too, curiously by rehashing old traditions for the common good, as is shown in the Good Karma section this time.

Here’s every reason to celebrate India!