Suddenly, working in India makes so much sense

I was in SF Bay Area last week recruiting for Flipkart. Over the  3 days I met several dozen candidates. What struck me was the degree of interest among candidates to work in India. And these were no ordinary candidates. They were some of the best that the world has produced, working in companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter holding million dollar plus in unvested equity and doing really exciting stuff at the cutting edge of what can be done in the technology world. And these were not just candidates of Indian origin but also those who had no connection to India and had never before considered working outside the US.

I did spend significant time trying to understand why they would be willing to uproot their families from the US and relocate to India. I was used to hearing personal things like desire to raise kids in India and being closer to ageing parents. This time it was different. Reasons were purely professional. They wanted to be on the ground where the real action is and be doing things that would impact billion plus people. Many of them felt that the centre of gravity of the mobile world has shifted to Asia and that Bangalore is the hotbed of mobile innovation.

In the evenings I socialised with my acquaintances as well as young engineers from IITs who had chosen to take direct US placement from campus upon graduation. I knew them since many of them were student developers on txtWeb platform, a mobile app platform that I used to previously run. In some of them, I could feel a sense of lost opportunity as they compared themselves with their batchmates who chose to stay in India to join a local startup or to start their own venture. 

I flew back over the weekend and as I landed at Kempegowda International Airport in Bangalore and made my way out to the car amid the hustle and bustle characteristic of India even at 3 am, it dawned on me that as the World is becoming boundary-less, not only funding but also the talent will flow wherever the opportunities (disguised as challenges) are.