Comment by sandGorgon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandGorgon | Hacker News Reader

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I suggest you go and check the senior leadership on LinkedIn for the current stream of startups and large companies.

Even more - we have expats actually building successful and highly funded startups in India. Take a look at Zoomcar, Zestmoney and CreditMate. India is extremely startup friendly for foreigners - maybe not as friendly as the US, but definitely more than Europe, China, etc.

We are one of the world's largest consumer internet and smartphone market ... oh and with strong net neutrality guarantees. Everyone wants to tap into that. India is moving very differently now !

In the last week, I have had 2 conversations with CXO level leadership of companies in the Bay Area, who want to move back to India and build startups here. I get to do this a lot because I run one of the earliest YC funded companies in India (when it was "special" for YC to fund an Indian startup). I end up being the sounding board for a lot of CXO level talent moving back to India.

BTW - Indian startups form the second largest pool for YC applications now (after the US). Not sure what the funding stats are.

Yeah sure. You can get senior leadership anything, as long as you pay 5x the market standard pay. This is for companies who are a net negative in profit.

'Funding stats' don't mean anything in this case where they have to keep dumping money never to see any returns. This will hurt the long term ecosystem even for genuine start ups. As investors will largely look at India as some kind of a money sink, where rogue upper managements splurge by paying big money salaries to their own.

>>We are one of the world's largest consumer internet and smartphone market

Is this why Tata Docomo is shutting operations. Jio is in the debt of the tune 1,25,000 crores and Airtel is enduring losses just to survive?

>>oh and with strong net neutrality guarantees.

We all saw how 2G lobbying went.

>>Everyone wants to tap into that. India is moving very differently now !

Tap into what? Losses?

>>who want to move back to India...

Most of them hold US passports, and will bail at any hint of trouble. They will continue to work as long as their obscene compensations are sustained. They did the same during the 2008 crash. Moved to India, made big money and moved back to US the moment the honey was sweeter there.

Let them put their money where there mouth is, give up US passports, take up Indians passports and work here. Until then nothing much can be expected from this loot-and-scoot crowd.

That is still very much a small minority. For the average Indian programmer in the US, there's very little incentive to move back to India purely for professional prospects. Let's face it, I'd much rather code for Amazon in Seattle than Flipkart in Bangalore.

Other factors like the shitty visa situation (more and more people are chosing to move to Canada because of their permanent residency requirements), family ties and some more ethereal things like the pull of the motherland come into play. As an Indian in the US with maybe 70-80 people from my undergraduate class in the US, a grand total of one person went back to India to build a startup despite having a succesful career.

In your case it's one...in my case its a dozen. But then, I'm from IIT Bombay - we have always been nuts !

But even the "one" is more than what used to exist earlier. A US job used to be the epitome of what you could achieve in your career. It's no longer the case.

I wouldn't presume to comment on you...but do think about it. It's brilliant out here and we would love for you to come and do the same.

Not sure if you are from CS. But IIT Bombay CS, batch is like the going choice for the top AIR in JEE. Also the program and the prestige associated with it is life long aristocratic privilege. Things like funding, and other support from network and alumni get a whole lot easier.

But even with that much going on for you, I still wouldn't recommend returning for something like this. Not unless you had a US passport in hand.

And for most people who go to US don't have even anything close to this going on for them. So you do the math :)

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