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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

August - 2006 - issue > Cover Story

India Calling

Keerthana Venkatesh and Sanjeev Jain
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Keerthana Venkatesh and Sanjeev Jain
With most technology companies off shoring their major operations to India, there is an increasing and compelling encouragement and perhaps need for Indians or Indian—Americans working in the U.S. to return home. This may be a strategy to tap into the emerging growth market. But, for the Indians it’s an offer of a lifetime. Says Gautam Sinha of TVA Infotech, a recruitment company based in Bangalore, “We have seen a steady trend of about 10-15 Indians applying with us for lucrative offers in India, partly because of growing kids and ageing parents to care for. But the action happening in the tech-world here is an attractive feature for them.”

While some returnees relocate lock, stock and barrel with the same company, there are others who prefer to change their companies to become a part of the Indian growth story and create history. And for some others, the pull was concern for the family and the pull of roots, or pushed by falling job opportunities in the Silicon Valley and tightening U.S. visa regulations.


Six-year-old Shreya bid adieu to her Montessori friends in Texas and joined another in the western Indian city of Pune. At the end of her first day at school, her parents waited to see her reaction of a new school and seeing newer faces. They were amazed when she ran home all excited, “Guess what, the school here is so good,” narrates her returnee father, Anshoo Gaur, managing director, Enterprise Management-India, EDS Inc.

Nearly a decade and a half after he left India for the U.S., Kalyan Gangavarapu of Four-Soft, Hyderabad, never expected to return. Even during the boom in India he had a stint with Indian conglomerates in their U.S. wings. “But somewhere I felt I was missing out on the action happening here. If you want to grow well, India is the place now,” says Gangavarapu. With the backing of his family, he took the plunge. He quit his job in the U.S. and joined the startup at Hyderabad and he’s enjoying every moment of it.

Gangavarapu and Gaur are just two among the thousands of techies who have returned to India and are glad they made the move. Drawn by a booming economy that is growing at 8.5 percent or more each year, in which outsourcing is playing a crucial role, and the money to buy the lifestyle they had back in the U.S., Indians are returning in large numbers. All the returnees’ siliconindia spoke to unanimously voted that the best way to grow is to move back.


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