Ask HN: How was your move back to India? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How was your move back to India?

14 pointsitsmorbintime11 comments

I’ve been living abroad for about five or six years now and I’m wondering whether returning back to India and living in Bangalore makes sense.

One of the biggest motivator of the move is that in India I don’t need a visa to do anything and that makes running a startup easier. Also from the outside looking in it seems like something special is brewing back in Bangalore. If I want to sell B2B SaaS it seems like a nice place where I’ll have possible customers all around me. The weather in Bangalore is quite nice too. The worries about a possible move back to India are inefficiencies in daily life - the traffic, long queues at airports, pollution, not enough green spaces, comparably worse infrastructure. All this said it seems like a good place to chase outsized out comes - alumni from college are in startups around the city and in VC, unicorns seem fairly frequent. I’d not move back with the intent of working for someone else.

The other options for me would be to live in cities like London, Toronto or East/West coast. The first two I could get residence or a startup visa even. The US seems like a different beast all together where residence/visa seems incredibly tough to navigate. For startup operators who have worked both in London/Toronto and Bangalore, how do they compare? The best thing I love about living abroad is that the basics mostly simply work & people around you generally don’t care about what you’re doing allowing you to operate. Through years of living abroad I’ve some networks in these cities (mostly alums from bigtech jobs).

If you're thinking of coming to Bangalore, you must know that the infrastructure is practically falling apart. Streets are filled of potholes, the city is overcrowded, rent is getting really expensive real fast, pollution is sky high, metro rail construction going everywhere but doesn't seem like it'll get completed even in next 5 years, recently most of outer ring road got heavily flooded because of incessant rains and illegal constructions on lake beds, corruption is rampant.

You should visit and live here for a couple of months (do a trial run) before you move permanently. Bangalore isn't what it used to be.

Hyderabad is basically Bangalore but without traffic, better infrastructure and great food.

The govt is also pushing forward the Tech space. Just check the new t-hub

https://t-hub.co

I’ve spent a lot of time in Canada, and the USA. Before you move to Canada, know that the winters are long and dark. You will need to make it your mission to pick up a winter activity (even if you’re feeling too old for that). This is how you will connect with people and make real Canadian friends and feel at home, and look forward to winters.

Most Europe is on similar lattitude to major Canadian cities, and yet people generally don't do winter sports (so, nights are as long, and winter is probably harsher than in coastal Canadian cities). They may take one ski trip per year, but generally, during winter, they don't do much things outside, apart maybe from some walks.

Despite most Europeans not participating, I'd recommend anyone new moving to Europe do the same - find winter activities to participate in.

In the West, Europeans have a reputation (not sure if true) of being socially conservative - they don't talk to strangers and you can't easily make friends. I'd suggest that the most natural way of making friends in any environment is to find activities are fun - perhaps a little challenging - that the locals enjoy.

I think more people in Europe don't find having random "friends" (that you can pick up at such activities) all that valueable. For example, as far as I know, there's no tradition in any European country of just sitting up at the bar and striking random conversations with strangers, like there is in US. We're much more about fewer, but deeper friendships, and don't mind solitude as much. There's way less extraversion in here than in the US for example. I'd say that, overall, we have a calmer and more thoughtful culture over here, whereas Americans love to be busy and frantic.

Would you please give some examples of winter activity to make friends?

India is growing and developing quite fast, with that comes opportunity to grow business etc with it which is happening a lot in India as seen by the increasing number of successful startups going up year over year.

So it would be false to think the current or past India will the the same, in next 5 - 10 years Tier 1 and Tier II cities will be quite developed, parts of which would be just as modern as anywhere in the west and in the future decades difference will be almost zero.

"The worries about a possible move back to India are inefficiencies in daily life - the traffic, long queues at airports, pollution, not enough green spaces, comparably worse infrastructure"

Yes pretty much this. If you can somehow manage to get past this after living abroad for a few years, India is an amazing place for many things. If you are relatively rich, you will be better off in India if you can learn to live around those inefficiencies.

Listen to 1947 podcast.

Stories of founder who came back to india and have started.

Hmm, maybe you could study this org if you want to be left alone by authorities:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/nxivm-salzman-sentence-1.6168666

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