‘Diaspora talent is an accelerator’: Can India ease brain drain as more tech workers return from US?

BENGALURU: Before Nithin Hassan, 43, returned to Bengaluru in 2024 after nearly two decades in the United States, he had just left a career in data centre capacity planning at tech giant Meta to pursue his ambition of starting his own company. Hassan had considered striking out on his own while still in the US, but found that immigration restrictions and the high cost of living meant his savings would last only five or six months before he needed another job.“I wanted to extend my runway. I thought India would be a better option,” he told CNA.He went on to co-found an AI startup in Bengaluru, joining a growing number of Indian professionals returning home after working overseas, according to recruitment firm Xpheno. Nithin Hassan pictured with the Seattle skyline during his time in the US. (Photo: Nithin Hassan) The number of Indian white-collar professionals returning from overseas grew by about 24 per cent in 2024 and 5 per cent in 2025, according to hiring firm Xpheno. Another 205,000 have returned so far in 2026, about 17 per cent more than in all of 2025. The firm told CNA its estimates are based on tracking professional movements on LinkedIn.India still saw more white-collar professionals move overseas than return, according to Xpheno data, but the gap had narrowed. In 2023, three professionals left for every one who returned, compared with about two departures for every returnee so far in 2026.The US is the largest source of returning Indian professionals this year, according to Xpheno data. Together with the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Canada and Saudi Arabia, the five countries accounted for 72 per cent of returnees tracked by the firm in 2026. While the data does not establish why individual workers returned, tech executives told CNA that immigration and employment uncertainty in the US are prompting more Indians to consider returning home. The uncertainty comes as the US tightened its H-1B programme in 2025, including favouring higher-paid, higher-skilled applicants and imposing a US$100,000 fee on certain new visa applications. Indians are particularly exposed, accounting for 71 per cent of approved H-1B visa applications in fiscal year 2024, according to the US government data. The US State Department’s move in May to increase the waiting period for employment-based green cards also reportedly added to the uncertainty. The trend comes as India seeks experienced talent to build its artificial intelligence and semiconductor sectors, though attracting and retaining such workers remains a challenge, experts said. “India cannot currently compete with the US on compute, research funding or dollar-denominated compensation. So we have to compete on something different - impact and opportunity,” said Amit Sheth, founding director of government-backed Indian AI Research Organization (IAIRO).Part of IAIRO’s mission is to bring experienced researchers from overseas to work together with young Indian talent.The rise in returnees poses two challenges for India: absorbing a large group whose overseas experience may offer little advantage, and retaining a smaller pool of sought-after AI and deep-tech talent despite gaps in pay, compute resources and cutting-edge work, experts said.RETURNING HOME AND RESETTING EXPECTATIONS Sudeepa Kolli, 25, who moved to the US for a master's at Cornell University four years ago and later landed a job as a tech consultant for a US software firm, returned to India last week despite having secured an H-1B visa.She said years of immigration uncertainty shaped her decision, ranging from her desire to return home and the ability to pursue side projects outside her job.In the US, Kolli said she also created online content and experimented with building small products but turned down opportunities to earn money from them because she feared doing so could violate the terms of her US visa. “It's a strange feeling when your instinct is to create something and your second thought has to be, ‘Am I allowed to do this?’” Kolli told CNA about her time in the US. Sudeepa Kolli during her four years in the US. (Photo: Sudeepa Kolli) For returnees looking for jobs in India, moving home can bring a different set of trade-offs.“The returnees have very high expectations of how work culture should be, what kind of compensation and facilities they should be getting, which is sort of difficult for employers in India to match,” said entrepreneur Hassan.The transition means recalibrating these expectations, he said.Hassan added that Indian employers may not always see an advantage in hiring returnees unless they bring specialised skills or overseas market connections that are harder to find locally. Some employers also worry that returnees may keep looking for better opportunities rather than stay with the company, he said, citing feedback he has heard from other returnees.The mismatch can be especially stark on pay.Based on his conversations with returnees, Hassan estimated that a mid-level employee moving from a major US tech firm to an equivalent role in India could earn about one-sixth of their US compensation, depending on the company, location and experience.“The friction often is the steep package gaps that come with the overseas returnee talent pool,” Kamal Karanth, co-founder of Xpheno, told CNA.Indian employers “do not bend backwards anymore” to match overseas packages, he said, with returnees generally expected to accept local pay. That said, returnees with proven expertise in advanced AI skills may be preferred and command a premium because India's domestic pool remains limited, Karanth said.INDIA’S GOT TALENT, BUT NEEDS EXPERIENCE“India has plenty of talent. What it lacks is enough people with years of experience doing cutting-edge research and building advanced technology,” said IAIRO’s Sheth, who spent 44 years in the US as a researcher, academic and entrepreneur before returning to India in 2024. Sheth said the three-month-old organisation has so far helped bring back two full-time employees to India after they spent about seven and 13 years in the US. Amit Sheth, who returned to India after 44 years in the US, leads the government-backed Indian AI Research Organization (IAIRO). (Photo: Amit Sheth) Its strategy is to draw roughly a third of its research talent from the diaspora, while Indian-origin experts who remain overseas remotely advise and mentor teams in the country. Besides this, the government's Ramanujan Fellowship - launched in 2006 - offers another route for scientists and engineers overseas to return to research positions in India. India’s Department of Science and Technology's 2025-26 annual report said the programme received 763 nominations, of which 109 were recommended for the fellowship. There are no public available figures for previous years.Private initiatives in India are also emerging to strengthen India’s research ecosystem.Entrepreneur Paras Chopra set up Lossfunk in Feb 2024, a privately backed research community in Bengaluru focused on fundamental research - exploring basic scientific questions rather than immediate commercial applications.“Top AI researchers and engineers are paid in millions of dollars in the (San Francisco) Bay Area and they find themselves amongst peers,” Chopra said. “Like China, we need to match their compensation and give them an ecosystem and lifestyle that they expect.”Chopra started Lossfunk after he sold his software company Wingify to a private equity firm in a deal worth about US$200 million in 2025. He has since turned his attention to funding fundamental research in India through Lossfunk. Researchers at work at the Lossfunk lab in Bengaluru, India. (Photo: Lossfunk) “India has exceptionally strong undergraduate talent, but needs experienced mentors who can teach them how to tackle difficult scientific problems rather than simply produce papers,” said Sushrut Thorat, who recently returned to India from Germany and is now a senior researcher at Lossfunk in Bengaluru.Overseas experts who return to mentor and train younger researchers can have an impact beyond their own work by helping develop more skilled researchers in India, Sheth said. Thorat, however, said researchers returning today still face significant gaps in India's research environment.“There are amazing pockets in India which are doing great research,” Thorat said, adding that there are not enough strong institutions and research groups connected across the country to form a wider ecosystem.CAN INDIA ABSORB THE TALENT COMING HOME? Kolli, who has decided to return to India from the US, is doing so without a job lined up.From the US, she said she watched more young Indians launch products, find customers and build companies, supported by a more visible community of founders and investors. She believes India's tech ecosystem has changed enough that returning home no longer feels like giving up her professional ambitions. “Whether India can absorb everyone who wants to return... I honestly don't know yet,” she said, pointing to compensation and the availability of specialised roles as potential gaps.“I'm making the bet that there are enough interesting problems, ambitious people and opportunities in India that I can figure it out once I'm there,” she said.Finding suitable roles can be difficult for professionals returning from the US, particularly when it comes to matching the pay, resources and complexity of work they are accustomed to, industry experts said. For highly specialised workers, particularly those at the frontier of AI, those gaps can be more pronounced, the experts added. Abhishek Upperwal, founder of Bengaluru-based AI research firm Soket Labs. (Photo: Abhishek Upperwal) “If 1,000 very amazing folks (in frontier AI) come to India right now, we don't have the capacity to absorb them,” said Abhishek Upperwal, founder of AI research firm Soket Labs.Upperwal said people accustomed to working in top US tech companies often want to tackle highly complex problems, while relatively few organisations in India currently offer such opportunities. The gap extends to resources as well. He also pointed out that an Indian researcher at Amazon in the US had access to computing resources comparable to the entire budget of an Indian AI startup. “The kind of funding that startups in India have, it is very difficult to match that kind of infrastructure (available at US firms),” he said.Hassan also points out that the growing number of people returning should not automatically be seen as an improvement of India's brain drain. At times, “it's just a reversal of physical movement,” he said, with some Indians moving from Silicon Valley to Bengaluru while continuing to work for overseas companies such as Meta, Uber or LinkedIn.The more meaningful measure is how many returnees start companies, build products or intellectual property and create employment in India, said Hassan.Sheth said the growing willingness of experienced Indians overseas to return home presents an opportunity not just to bring back talent, but to use their expertise to train others and build lasting capabilities. “Diaspora talent is an accelerator, not the end goal,” Sheth said. “The end goal is to build that capability permanently in India.”