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America's Unwanted Ivy Leaguers Are Flocking to India


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Freshdesk CEO Girish Mathrubootham (center) and a Hindu priest offering flowers in a ceremony to mark the opening of Freshdesk's new office in Chennai in January.

India's best and brightest students are increasingly being drawn back to their homeland.

Credit: Freshdesk

India's best and brightest students increasingly are being drawn back to their homeland, or not leaving in the first place, as the country's technology boom takes off.

This development reverses a decades-long trend of Indians coming to study at top American universities with the hope of ultimately finding employment in the U.S.

University of North Carolina, Pembroke professor Sonali Jain says the Indian tech boom, as well as the constraints of the U.S. H-1B visa program that many Indians would use to remain in the U.S., are encouraging more homecomings.

The Indian tech sector, especially in the e-commerce and mobile spaces, has been rapidly gathering momentum. Venture capital investments in Indian tech companies reached $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter, nearly six times what they were a year before.

Meanwhile, financial institutions, including hedge funds, investment firms, and asset managers, have poured $3.8 billion into just 26 Indian tech startups since the start of 2014.

However, due to India's cumbersome bureaucracy, many of these companies are based in the U.S., even though much of their workforce is located in India, where labor is much less expensive.

From Bloomberg
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