Despite deep differences over human rights and Indias stance on Russias war in Ukraine, President Joe Biden extended to Modi the administrations third invitation for a state visit. It included the state dinner, a high diplomatic honor that the U.S. reserves for its closest allies.

Biden hopes all the pomp and attention being lavished on Modi from the thousands who gathered on the White House lawn to cheer his arrival in the morning to the splashy dinner at the end of the day will help him firm up relations with the leader of a country the U.S. believes will be a pivotal force in Asia for decades to come.

Rich and famous Indian Americans from the fields of business, entertainment, politics and more were expected among approximately 400 dinner guests riding trolley cars down to a pavilion erected on the White House south grounds decorated in the green and saffron colors of Indias flag.

Despite concerns about backsliding on democracy in India, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said she would attend the dinner to send the message that the nation of 1.4 billion people is important and we must call out some of the real issues that are threatening the viability of democracy in all of our countries.

A group of more than 70 lawmakers, organized by Jayapal, wrote to Biden this week urging him to raise concerns about the erosion of religious, press and political freedoms with Modi.

Jayapal, who praised Modis leadership skills, told The Associated Press that he has the ability to move India and the people in his party back to the values that we have held so dear as a country.

Another guest, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, said he looked forward to the dinner as an exciting time for U.S.-India relations.

I think we have two countries which have a lot of shared foundations, large democratic systems and values, Pichai said Thursday in an interview. He cited technology as one area of mutual interest between the nations. So I think its an exciting opportunity. Im glad there is a lot of investment in a bilateral relationship.

Guests were to dine on a salad of marinated millet, corn and compressed watermelon, stuffed Portobello mushrooms and saffron risotto, and a strawberry shortcake infused with cardamom and rose syrup. Roasted sea bass was an option for guests who wanted it added to their main course.

First lady Jill Biden enlisted California-based chef Nancy Curtis to help in the kitchen. Curtis specializes in plant-based cooking and said the menu showcases the best of American cuisine seasoned with Indian elements and flavors. She said she used millet because India is leading an international year of recognition for the grain.

Lotus flowers, which are native to Asia and featured in Indian design, were visible throughout the pavilion, along with saffron-hued floral arrangements that differed from table to table.

We hope guests feel as if someone has set that table just for them because we have, the first lady said as she and her staff previewed the setup.

After-dinner entertainment was from American violinist Joshua Bell; Penn Masala, a South Asian a cappella group founded by students at the University of Pennsylvania; and the U.S. Marine Band Chamber Orchestra.

India was last honored with a state visit in 2009, when President Barack Obama pulled out all the stops for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. More than 300 guests attended what was the first big social event of the new administration.

But it made headlines worldwide after a celebrity-seeking husband and wife were admitted, even though they were not invited, and were able to interact with both leaders.

The embarrassing episode led the White House and U.S. Secret Service, which protects the president and the executive mansion, to overhaul its clearance and security procedures.

Coast Guard officials said during a news conference Thursday that theyve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which has been missing for several days. Debris found during the search for the vessel is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel, said Rear Adm. John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District.

The outpouring of support in this highly complex search operation has been great appreciated. Our most heartfelt condolences go out to the friends and loved ones of the crew, Mauger said.

OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement that all five people on board, including company CEO Stockton Rush, are believed to be dead. Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet have sadly been lost, OceanGate said in a statement.

OceanGate did not provide details when the company announced the loss of life in a statement or how officials knew the crew members perished. The Titans 96-hour oxygen supply likely ended early Thursday.

OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanics decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

The Titan was estimated to have about a four-day supply of breathable air when it launched Sunday morning in the North Atlantic but experts have emphasized that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers have taken measures to conserve breathable air. And its not known if they survived since the subs disappearance.

Rescuers have rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard said an undersea robot sent by a Canadian ship had reached the sea floor, while a French research institute said a deep-diving robot with cameras, lights and arms also joined the operation.

Authorities have been hoping underwater sounds might help narrow their search, whose coverage area has been expanded to thousands of miles twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) deep. Coast Guard officials said underwater noises were detected in the search area Tuesday and Wednesday.

Jamie Pringle, an expert in Forensic Geosciences at Keele University, in England, said even if the noises came from the submersible, The lack of oxygen is key now; even if they find it, they still need to get to the surface and unbolt it.

The Titan was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. Johns, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the iconic ocean liner sank more than a century ago. OceanGate Expeditions, which is leading the trip, has been chronicling the Titanics decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

By Thursday morning, hope was running out that anyone on board the vessel would be found alive.

Dr. Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, emphasized the difficulty of finding something the size of the submersible, which is about 22 feet (6.5 meters) long and 9 feet (nearly 3 meters) high.

Youre talking about totally dark environments, in which an object several dozen feet away can be missed, he said. Its just a needle in a haystack situation unless youve got a pretty precise location.

Newly uncovered allegations suggest there had been significant warnings made about vessel safety during the submersibles development.

Broadcasters around the world started newscasts at the critical hour Thursday with news of the submersible. The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya showed a clock on air counting down to their estimate of when the air could potentially run out.

Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District said a day earlier that authorities were still holding out hope of saving the five passengers onboard.

This is a search-and-rescue mission, 100%, he said Wednesday.

Retired Navy Capt. Carl Hartsfield, now the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, said the sounds detected have been described as banging noises, but he warned that search crews have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential manmade sources other than the Titan. Frederick acknowledged Wednesday that authorities didnt what the sounds were.

The report of sounds was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to bang on their submersibles hull to be detected by sonar.

The U.S. Navy said in a statement Wednesday that it was sending a specialized salvage system thats capable of hoisting large, bulky and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels.

The Titan weighs 20,000 pounds (9,000 kilograms). The U.S. Navys Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System is designed to lift up to 60,000 pounds (27,200 kilograms), the Navy said on its website.

Lost aboard the vessel is pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate. His passengers are: British adventurer Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

In the first comments from Pakistan since the Titan vanished, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Thursday that officials have confidence in the search efforts.

We would not like to speculate on the circumstances of this incident and we would also like to respect the wishes of the Dawood family that their privacy be respected, she said.

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGates submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.

One of the companys first customers characterized a dive he made to the site two years ago as a kamikaze operation.

Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You cant stand. You cant kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other, said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. You cant be claustrophobic.

During the 2 1/2-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10 1/2 hours.

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.

Nick Rotker, who leads underwater research for the nonprofit research and development company MITRE, said the difficulty in searching for the Titan has underscored the U.S.s need for more underwater robots and remotely operated underwater vehicles.

The issue is, we dont have a lot of capability or systems that can go to the depth this vessel was going to, Rotker said.

Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth, England, said the disappearance of the Titan highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.

Even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen. With the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this.

We see the role of the CFO as being able to describe what it takes to double the value, double the market cap of the company, in five years, said Seth, during a Fortune virtual conversation on Wednesday entitled The Emerging CFO: Maintaining a Growth Mindset In Turbulent Economic Waters.

What are the key steps that can help a company double its size in half a decade? What role does organic growth play in propelling revenue? How about M&A or divestitures? What about tech innovation and resource allocations? Seth said these questions are core to how a CFO can outline a clear value creation thesis, which must also have buy-in from the board and investors.

This is an environment where all of us have been very focused on growth, said Seth. CFOs and CEOs have been incredibly focused on growth.

Founded in 2004, e.l.f. Beauty has had no problems with growth. For 17 consecutive quarters, the companys net sales have risen, doubling the beauty makers market share in the process. 

Mandy Fields, CFO at e.l.f. Beauty, attributes the gains to a few factors. Over the past four years, marketing investments have risen from 7% of net sales to 22% in the latest fiscal year. And e.l.f. Beauty isnt afraid of taking risks. It joined TikTok in 2019 before many brands were comfortable putting dollars into a platform that has seen soaring popularity, especially with younger users. After the pandemic, other brands jumped in, but e.l.f. Beauty had a first-mover advantage. 

Having that track record of not being afraid to take risks and seeing that outsized growth has been fantastic here at e.l.f., said Fields. 

At Adobe, recent acquisitions including the nearly $1.3 billion deal for software maker Frame.io and $1.5 billion purchase of workflow startup Workfront are meant to complement the business. But organic growth remains the top driver for revenue. 

Innovation is at the core of who we are as a company, said Adobe CFO Dan Durn. It is in our DNA. We are consistently reinventing the company Status quo is not a business strategy at Adobe. 

He said that Adobes team are big users of their own products, which helps the Photoshop makers innovation pipeline better serve customers. Durn said that internally, there is a clarity around what we are going to innovate and grow organically, and then how we complement that in a smart fashion with inorganic growth.

Seth said that typically, CFOs have an arsenal at their disposal to manage and measure expenses, but creating the right incentives for growth can be more difficult. Many companies dont have a clear vocabulary for how they measure it. Adobes exampleorganic versus inorganic growthis one way to think about growth. Others could include factoring the lifetime value of customers or the return on investment for tech spending.

CFOs would be well served to say, Look, how do we create that same level of capability and that muscle around the growth strategy, said Seth.

TD Bank CFO Xihao Hu said macro trends are favorable for banks as the Federal Reserve has steadily raised interest rates. Amid that warm climate, TD has moved to generate as much growth as possible, but Hu added cautiously that you cannot rely upon the macro environment at all times.

New products to lure in customers have included TD Clear, a subscription-based credit card, and TD FlexPay, which allows users to skip a payment once a year and automatically refunds the first late fee each year. 

We continue to innovate our products to bring new customers into TD, so we can continue to expand the base of our customers and even grow in an environment that isnt as conducive from an interest-rate perspective, said Hu.

For Hu, the growth story contains two tales. First, there is the organizational growth that comes from setting a strategy and then sharing it with managers to ensure the mindset of growth cascades to TDs various teams. The second is professional growth, and Hu said TD has learning days for employees to teach them how to tell a story better, including using numbers to give that story more credibility. 

Seth said CFOs growth mindset should center on three ideas: growing the core business a company is in, adding adjacent products or segments, and driving growth by igniting truly new breakout businesses. It is easy for companies to home in on just one, but a true growth mindset is to focus on all three. 

He added that McKinsey has looked at around 2,000 public companies and looked at their performance relative to peers the last two decades, and five variables drive that growth. They are: resource allocation and how dynamic those investments are, M&A, productivity and efficiency, tech innovation, and margin expansion.

It all starts with the team, and we have a motto here at e.l.f., One team, one dream, said Fields. She explained that every single employee is given equity in the company each year. We all want to see the company grow, she added.

Each summer, Fields team goes offsite to ask where the company wants to be in three years and how they build a plan to reach those goals. They revisit those targets each year.

It is an opportunity for inspiration, imagination, and possibility to converge, said Fields. Even though weve experienced this tremendous growth, there is still so much more ahead of us. 

A growth mindset, Durn said, is to be constructively unreasonablethe sweet spot of stretching teams to do more than they thought was possible.

Great ideas come from anywhere, so our job as leaders is to surface these ideas and get them on the table and get them to be a part of the dialogue, said Durn.