Goin' Home

Sean Narayan - happy to be back home

India's IT prodigals return home

By Harsh Kabra
BBC News, Pune

In the 13 years that Sean Narayanan lived in the US, he earned a masters degree from Oklahoma University, worked with a top consulting firm and served at senior positions in technology companies.

Three years ago, he sold off his 3,800 sq ft plush house in Virginia and returned to India.

"India today offers the best of both worlds," Mr Narayanan says.

"Global experience seems essential in the infotech industry and there's no better place than India to get it."

He now works as a major division head at Cognizant, a Nasdaq-listed infotech services provider.

'Brain gain'

Santanu Paul is another Indian who spent 13 years in the US, obtaining a doctorate in computer science from Michigan University, working with IBM in New York and leading two technology start-up companies.

Infosys
Firms like Infosys have been enjoying huge profits

In 2003, he decided to return to India to become the general manager at a Hyderabad-based software services firm.

"Right now, India feels like an exciting start-up company, while the West feels like a plodding large company," says Dr Paul.

Less than a decade ago, people like Mr Narayanan and Dr Paul would have been rare exceptions in a generation that fancied the West as the land of opportunity.

Today, they are among the over 25,000 expatriate Indian infotech professionals estimated to have returned home in the last four years.

That figure comes from the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the premier trade body of India's booming infotech industry.

Around 40% of these professionals are believed to have returned last year alone.

They got what they needed, experience in America.

The fact is simple, though, American racism will prevent them from becoming CEO's and major division heads. So they go back home and take what they have earned. When I studied who ran tech companies in the 1990's, you had Asian run companies and white run companies, but few companies where Asians were senior and whites their junior, much less promoted over whites to run companies.

posted by Steve @ 3:40:00 PM