Tech Talent Moving From Bay Area to Bengaluru are Facing a Hard Reality

When Zoho’s former CEO Sridhar Vembu wrote an open letter to Indians in the US, calling them to “come back home,” it was more than just a bugle to preserve “Bharatiya civilisation” in light of the rising hate crimes against Indians. He was asking them to build long-term technological capability from within the country.

For decades, the US represented the default ambition ladder for India’s top technology professionals. Engineers, product managers, and business leaders moved through the H-1B pipeline into Silicon Valley, Wall Street firms, and global consulting companies, building careers that were once difficult to replicate back home.

That equation is beginning to change.

A growing number of senior Indian-origin professionals working in the US are returning to India to fill in leadership across global capability centres (GCCs), AI startups, SaaS firms, and deeptech ventures. According to LinkedIn, there was a 40% increase in tech workers changing their location from the US to India in Q3 2025.

The shift is being driven by a combination of tightening US immigration conditions, layoffs, and slower growth in parts of the American technology sector, alongside India’s own evolution into a global technology and innovation hub. The H-1B visa rule changes, including shifting from random lottery to wage-weighted selection, a $100,000 fee for employers, and stricter scrutiny, are driving professionals away. 

Then there’s the emotional strain associated with long-term visa uncertainty.

In a LinkedIn post, Gautam Dey, an H-1B professional based in the US, recounted being unable to travel to India to see his mother during her final days because of visa stamping delays and fears of being stranded outside the US. “I was forced into an impossible choice: Be with my dying mother, or protect the future of my children,” he wrote. 

Dey urged young professionals to reconsider viewing overseas relocation as the only definition of success, arguing that India now offers meaningful opportunities in AI, deeptech, and product engineering. 

Who’s Coming Back, and Who Isn’t

Yet hiring executives say the story is more nuanced than the headlines suggest.

“The trend is real, but the headlines are running ahead of what's actually happening on the ground,” Anuj Agrawal, Founder and CEO of talent advisory firm Zyoin Group, tells AIM.

According to the company, demand for US-returned leaders at the VP, director and CXO levels has risen sharply over the last 12–18 months, especially in recent quarters amid increasing uncertainty around H-1B-linked developments.

“But I'd push back on the idea that there's a flood of returnees. There isn't,” Agrawal asserts. “But there is a real shift at the senior end of the market.”

However, he argues that the return movement is not fundamentally being driven by immigration pressure alone. “H-1B is honestly not the main story. It's the tipping point for people who were already thinking about it. Ten years ago, coming back to India meant taking a step down—smaller scope, smaller problems, smaller paycheck. That's just not true anymore.”

Many returning leaders now see opportunities to run global product charters, lead AI initiatives, or manage meaningful P&L responsibilities with equity upside from India itself. “For the first time, staying [in the US] feels like the bigger compromise,” he remarks.

At the same time, executives caution against overstating the scale of the influx beyond senior leadership layers. “This is a senior leadership story, not a mid-career one,” Agrawal says. “We're not seeing junior or mid-level engineers returning in any meaningful numbers.”

Data shared by Xpheno reflects this changing pattern in talent movement between India and the US. Total outbound white-collar talent moving from India to the US stood at 19,500 in 2023, dropped to 17,600 in 2024, and rose again to 21,200 in 2025. Talent returning from the US to India during the same period rose from 7,200 in 2023 to 15,100 in 2025.

“We've seen a significant rise in the count of mid-senior and above professionals with 10+ years of experience returning to India during this period,” observes Siddharth Verma, Business Head, Xpheno Executive Search.

The number of senior returnees rose from around 350 in 2023 to 2,400 in 2025, though Verma notes that the increase also reflects a low starting base. Importantly, senior talent moving from India to the US also increased during the same period, rising from 650 in 2023 to 2,800 in 2025.

“The movement has been two-way, and this is attributed primarily to the high churn of talent driven by local developments in the US,” Verma shares.

The GCC Pull Factor

Much of the hiring demand is concentrated in sectors that now operate with global mandates from India.

“GCCs are the biggest absorber by far, especially the new wave that owns actual product charters, not just back-office work,” Agrawal says. “They're hiring VPs of engineering, Heads of AI, platform leaders, and increasingly India MDs with full P&L authority.”

He identifies AI as another major hiring magnet, particularly among Indian AI startups and the India operations of global AI labs looking for applied research leaders, machine learning infrastructure heads, and executives with experience building foundation models.

“There's just no way to build that bench domestically right now—you have to import it,” he adds.

Agrawal also points to strong demand from Series C and later-stage SaaS and product companies hiring chief product officers, engineering heads, and growth leaders with US-scale operating experience. Deeptech areas such as semiconductors, robotics, and defence technology are also seeing heightened interest.

Where demand remains relatively muted, however, is among legacy sectors.

“Traditional BFSI, FMCG, the big legacy enterprises still prefer leaders with deep domestic context, and frankly, returnees often find the cultural fit too rough,” Agrawal observes.

TeamLease Digital similarly sees GCCs and AI startups leading the hiring momentum for globally experienced professionals.

“GCCs alone now drive nearly 30–35% of AI hiring nationally, while India currently has over 6,500 open leadership roles across GCCs that align well with globally experienced professionals,” notes CEO Neeti Sharma.

Culture Clash

Despite the opportunity, companies are also discovering that hiring globally experienced leaders requires structural changes within organisations.

“The biggest challenge is aligning leadership expectations with organisational reality,” Sharma shares. “Many returnee executives expect faster decision-making, global ownership, and innovation-led roles, while several Indian firms still operate through layered and execution-heavy structures.”

Agrawal was even more direct about the cultural friction. “Returnees come from places where a junior engineer can disagree with a CTO in a design review, and nobody blinks,” he says. “The hierarchy theatre that's still common in Indian companies—the title deference, the layered approvals, the meeting-heavy decision-making—drives these leaders crazy.”

According to him, compensation no longer drives retention. “You can hire them, but you'll lose them in 18 months… It's a culture problem,” he adds.

Compensation itself, however, is evolving in important ways. Verma says Indian enterprises no longer aggressively stretch to match overseas salary structures. “The package and parity are kept in line with the local structures they operate with, and the burden has been shifted to the talent to work out if it suits their expectations,” he comments.

Agrawal believes Indian companies are often focusing on the wrong part of the compensation equation.

“A returnee isn't choosing between two cash packages; they're choosing between two ten-year wealth trajectories,” he said.

Companies successfully attracting global leaders are increasingly offering meaningful ESOP structures, liquidity pathways, performance-linked equity and, in some cases, dollar-linked compensation components for global mandates. “If your offer is ‘great salary plus a token ESOP,’ you're going to lose,” he opines.

The larger issue, executives argue, is whether organisations are willing to hand returning leaders genuine authority.

“The fastest way to burn a returnee CXO is to hire them into ‘Head of India, reporting to a global head’ with no actual charter,” Agrawal mentions. “Nobody comes back across the world to be a delivery manager.”

Sharma also observes that returnee leaders are prioritising strategic ownership and global influence over compensation alone.

“GCCs are attracting this talent because they offer India-based authority with global business impact,” she says.

GCCs operate with globally aligned work cultures due to their proximity to overseas headquarters, making them easier environments for returning leaders to integrate into.

“The challenge or friction levels that GCCs encounter are relatively lower, and this is also a factor that returnees would prefer a GCC when given a choice,” Verma explains.

For India’s technology ecosystem, the trend signals a broader shift in how global leadership and innovation roles are being distributed.

Indian companies may still struggle to match Silicon Valley on absolute compensation, but hiring experts say the strongest organisations are no longer competing on salary alone.

“What you can offer is something the US genuinely can't—the chance to build a category-defining company from India, with real ownership and global ambition,” Agrawal says.