Four year-old Pooja Tadepalli goes ballistic on seeing the balloon peddler parked on her street in Bangalore. In the last two months she has been in India, Tadepalli junior has learnt the art of buying balloons—bargaining for the usually broken promise of “good behavior.” Vasantha Erraguntla, Pooja’s mother, who relocated to India in June 2004 laughs, “In the fifteen years since I left, India has changed in so many ways, and yet some things remain unchanged.”

Erraguntla was prompted to contemplate moving on to India as the growing delivery successes and depth of activity in the chip design industry in the country became extremely attractive business models for industry leaders. With deep experience in a variety of advanced prototype design projects at Intel Laboratories in Oregon, it was quite obvious that India for her would be a great fit. As luck would have it, her discussions about relocating coincided with the Intel management’s plans for expanding its Bangalore operations. Sometime at the end of last year, she received a mandate to set up the Intel Bangalore Design Labs.

She visited India twice to lay the groundwork for establishing the Circuit Research Labs, which would facilitate circuit research and prototype development for Intel. She made the final move in June 2004 along with her family.

The India opportunity has opened up a new dimension in Erraguntla’s career growth. Unlike in the U.S. where her role was more of an individual contributor on the technical side, she has taken up the leadership in setting up the group operations today. And this excites her. “Dealing with the facilities manager, staffing manger, HR folks, finance executives and operations manager to get my team established and going is a big challenge and opportunity. Here is an opportunity to build a new ecosystem,” she says, with justifiable pride.

Building the team is equally challenging. Though Erraguntla’s technology contribution is not as much as it used to be, she plays a more important role in mentoring her team members, most of whom are fresh graduates from universities across India. “Bringing all of them into the Intel way of doing things and creating the right work perspective is a wonderful high. It is very satisfying to channel people, especially when you can see the outcome quickly,” she beams.

“One shouldn’t come here only to look for reasons to return to the U.S. Many came in the 90s and went back as frustration set in quickly. Rather, one should do all that he or she can to minimize those frustrations—which will be there, inevitably. “The attitude should be—‘We moved here, so lets make it workable’,” says Erraguntla. Her advice for the returnees: Smile. Chill out. Take whatever comes in your stride. Don’t get worked up. And most importantly, learn to see the humor in the situation—there is always a bit of it.