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> It will be very interesting over the next two decades to see if, with the rise of India, this trend continues, flattens, or even reverses.

This is true. I graduated from one of the well-known engineering colleges 4 years back in India and a good percentage of my CS batch went to study in top-schools in the US with a primary motivation to get a job and get settled.

Fast forward to now, most of them are looking at coming back and thinking of getting a slice of pie in the booming tech / Ecommerce market in the country. With VC investments booming, and mobile penetration rising tremendously (even in tier 2 cities / towns) the order of the day is to quickly clone a popular business model that has worked in the west and innovate under the local constraints.

I can clearly see the curve flattening or even reversing in the next 8-10 years. All in all, it sounds like good news for the Indian economy.

While the VC investments and rise of so many startups is exciting, I am still worried if it is sustainable or everyone is just riding on the VC fuel. Most of the startups, are consumer based companies, many of which, have followed the American counterparts, and to gain market share, they are not worried about spending money like it is endless. Take an example of "Lenskart", which will send an optician to your doorstep who will do eye-check for you @ Rs. 50 ( < $1 ). Not to mention, the sheer number of promotional and branding campaigns they have been running.

I believe not every company is like that, but the startup scene in India is more or less, a gaining-user-share game. In pessimistic future, where these startups would be relying on the last pennies of their funding, I am not sure if they would be able to sustain if they start pricing the things they sell at a price to make a profit, since the Indian consumer finds these offers, the major reason to use the app.

It would be good if the startups also tilt towards actually making products, like VWO, Browserstack and ours[1]. Although, I am aware, that question like, "How the heck that will make money?" has been proved to be pointless at many times in history, if you think of Facebook / Google but I believe eCommerce companies find it hard to grow profits quickly unless they are inventing a new business model (AirBnB, eBay, Alibaba).

[1]: http://adpushup.com

E-commerce is a numbers game. Look beyond e-comm and there are plenty of promising product based companies-- Freshdesk, helpshift, zoho, boomerang commerce, indix, pubmatic, zomato, common-floor, housing etc. I think you're being overly pessimistic about the tech scene in India. Flipkart has already made a lot of millionaires, and when other unicorns start going public, we'd start seeing a lot of wealthy individuals that'd turn investors themselves. The key is that critical mass, which I think the Indian tech scene (4th largest in the world in terms of capital, behind US, UK, and China) has already achieved.

Also see: http://yourstory.com/2015/04/indian-entrepreneurs-merger-acq... and http://yourstory.com/2015/04/billion-dollar-company-india/

> What is the cause? Most likely, an extremely strong self-selecting tendency for immigrants.

As an American I often feel like we don't really appreciate the size of the population of Asia. 3 million Indians in America essentially represents the 0.1% of the Indian population most interested and able to come here, so it should not be surprising that the average performance of that group on many given metrics would be above average.

The able part should not be downplayed either. The mere cost of a ticket to get to the U.S. automatically selects for a relatively high income family as a single ticket costs more than the annual median household income.

As an analogy, it's as if a ticket to Europe cost $60,000 dollars and Europeans marveled at how educated and successful and driven all Americans were. When in reality, just to afford the ticket they would have to be either already successful or extremely driven and focused on that singular goal.

Don't forget the high percentage of English proficiency in India as a whole. That opens a huge range of well-paid mid skilled corporate jobs (ex: software tester) for non-high achieving immigrants (family reunification etc.) This has a significant risk reduction for family's which has a host of positive knock on effects.

i.e in this case, the following does not apply:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Words of a late 19th century poet.

The way people quote it, you'd think it was straight out of the Constitution or Declaration of Independence or something. The fact that the poem was written after the Chinese Exclusion Act was written makes it something of a farce, IMHO.

The words stand on their own, but the broad application of those words is certainly an ideal, and not a true reflection of this country's varied immigration policies towards various ethnic groups over its shortish history.

> an average IQ of about 112

I am very curious about the new indian elite white collar crime rates. It seems like most of the time I see a headline about a bust of medicare/medicaid scams or insider trading. Then you get multiple anecdotes of guys like Vinod Khosla trying to steal a beach. Cheating and bribery is certainly rampant in india. IQ ain't everything, you know.

Well they learned it from their master.

Not joking. This is what American Indians say when I argue about corruption or workplace politicking - that Americans are much worse and much better at pretending it doesn't exist.

Pretending what doesn't exist?