It hasn’t fully stopped but Indians have definitely started pulling the plug on brain drain

Sundar Pichai of Alphabet Inc, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Parag Agarwal of Twitter, and Arvind Krishna of IBM. There is something common between all these tech experts. They all are Indian-origin CEOs. If you do a google search, you will find many more such famous names. Indian students have had a strong propensity for moving out to other countries in order to make a good career.

But the present generations may no longer need to go abroad. They are starting their own businesses and getting billions in the form of investments for their start-ups. Just take a look at the ongoing month of January, Indian start-ups have managed to attract record investments of up to $3.5 billion across 130 deals. A large part of the talent that used to move abroad after higher education is now staying back in India and is fuelling the country’s growth story. Let’s explore how things are changing.

Read more: Startup India and Make in India expected to boost employment in 2022

The great Indian brain drain

We won’t start by explaining how many Indians have migrated overseas, or how the Indian diaspora has become one of the biggest immigrant communities in the world due to relentless migration to countries like the US, the UK or Canada. Rather, there is something to ponder over. Why have so many young students and workers preferred to migrate to other countries over several generations?

There can only be one motivating factor for settling outside your home country- a good career and a fat salary. This is why Indians started migrating in the first place. Till 1991, the License Raj policy scuttled private enterprise and even the most talented of minds couldn’t think about starting their own businesses.

For an average middle-class student, there were only two things he could do to make it big- crack the civil services exam or get an ‘NRI’ tag. Many who didn’t want to get into government service or couldn’t get into a coveted government job decided to move abroad in search of a good career. And there was nothing wrong with it. Everyone has a right to look for a good career.

But the brain drain took a heavy toll on the Indian economy. Heavy subsidies on education in the country’s elite institutions was actually flowing abroad and fuelling the West’s economic prosperity.

Liberalisation didn’t stop brain drain

Indian economy did get liberalised in 1991. License Raj did end and an IT revolution did employ millions of software engineers in the country. But brain drain did not end. In fact, several news reports disclose that over fifty percent of the first rankers in Classes X and XII examinations from 1996 to 2015 migrated abroad and were either studying or employed abroad.

Between 2000 and 2020, India witnessed emigration of 10 million (one crore) people, as per the “International Migration 2020 Highlights”, report prepared by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA).

The problem was that while the economy did get liberalised, what the IT sector was then offering was a job in an IT consultancy service with a decent salary and a limited scope of growth. India became a software developer. This was clearly not good enough for people who migrated abroad and became CEOs of the global tech giants.

What India was missing was a start-up mindset. People didn’t think of opening an individual business as a plausible idea and doing something big in technology and innovation wasn’t even being considered. And this is changing now.

The start-up boom

The Indian economy has been rising rapidly over the past 20 years. Since 2014, the growth figures have been constantly high. But there is another big change- startup businesses are driving Indian growth.

Take the example of January 2022 itself. There were four deals every day and over $115 million were attracted in daily inflows in disclosed deal value. There has been a six times jump over the same month last year. We are now actually losing track of Indian firms attracting investments. When Indian start-ups had only started to make a mark after 2010, such deals made the news. But it is no big event now.

Global investors are getting bullish on the Indian start-up scene, which is expected to attract more investments and bolster hiring by Indian businesses.

But the point is that these start-ups are being created by young professionals, who would have migrated abroad had it not been for the start-up boom. Such young and talented minds have created products like Ola, BYJU’s and Oyo. This actually transforms India’s role from a software developer to a maker of IT products.

Read more: 2021 showered a whopping $36 billion on Indian startups

For some Indian students, migrating abroad may still be a career dream. But many brilliant tech experts don’t want to move abroad, because they can actually start their own business and make it big in India.