From McDonald's and Coca-Cola to Amazon and Apple, U.S.-based multinationals are facing calls for a boycott in India as business leaders and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's supporters encourage protests against U.S. tariffs.

India, the world's most populous country, remains a crucial market for American brands that have quickly expanded to reach a growing group of wealthy consumers, many of whom are still enamored with international labels seen as symbols of upward mobility.

India, for example, is the largest market by users for Meta's WhatsApp, and Domino's has more restaurants than any other brand in the country. Beverages like Pepsi and Coca-Cola often dominate store shelves, and people still line up when a new Apple store opens or a Starbucks cafe offers discounts.

Although there was no immediate sign that sales were affected, there is a growing movement both on social media and offline to buy local and avoid American products after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on goods from India, rattling exporters and straining ties between New Delhi and Washington.

Manish Chowdhary, co-founder of India's Wow Skin Science, posted a video message on LinkedIn encouraging support for farmers and startups to make "Made in India" a "global obsession," and to learn from South Korea, whose food and beauty products are renowned worldwide.

"We have lined up for products from thousands of miles away. We have proudly spent on brands that we don't own, while our own makers fight for attention in their own country," he said.

Rahm Shastry, CEO of India's DriveU, which offers a car driver on call service, wrote on LinkedIn: "India should have its own home-grown Twitter/Google/YouTube/WhatsApp/FB – like China has."

While Indian retail companies provide stiff competition to foreign brands like Starbucks in the domestic market, expanding globally has remained a challenge.

Indian IT services firms, however, have become deeply embedded in the global economy, with companies like TCS and Infosys providing software solutions to clients around the world.

On Sunday, Modi made a "special appeal" for becoming self-reliant, telling a gathering in Bengaluru that Indian technology companies create products for the world but "now is the time for us to give more priority to India's needs."