After stints in U.S., more Indian engineers head home

For Manu Agarwal and Ranjan Bose, the plan to return to India was "always on the agenda." The two engineers quit their jobs in the U.S. high-tech industry to co-found Design Expo Network Pvt. Ltd., a software company based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) whose flagship product is an instant-messaging program. Agarwal remains the chief executive officer; Bose has since left for a teaching job at the India Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, one of a nationwide network of highly regarded technical institutes.

Although both of the IIT-Kanpur grads are primarily hardware engineers, they drew on their experience in software engineering to co-found Design Expo. At the time of its launch in 1997, "The Internet was still in its infancy in India and the IT industry was young and rapidly growing," Agarwal said. "Moreover, we have good engineers here. And with the Internet being in place, sharing information and getting to know about the latest technologies is not difficult." The company posted revenue of about $171,489 in 1999 and expected roughly the same in 2000.

The co-founders picked the bustling seaport of Mumbai, in west central India, as the site for their startup for two main reasons: to easily tap into the engineering talent at the IIT there (last year, Design Expo hired 24 IIT-Mumbai graduates) and because it was home base of another co-founder, company director Amar Sinha. Sinha's presence made completing the formalities of establishing a company easier, Agarwal said. As a result, the entrepreneurs did not face as many difficulties as they had expected with a government bureaucracy known for its vexing rules and regulations.

"I had a realistic picture in mind [about setting up shop in Mumbai]," said Bose. "I was prepared for slow phone connections . . . let's just say my expectations were low." But "If you and your company are well organized, you won't face too many problems, except perhaps when dealing with the government."

Another plus in the city of 13 million is a ready talent pool, Agarwal said. "There are not many competitors in Mumbai to hog the human resources," he said. "The idea was to not only get access to suitable engineers, but also not to place an emphasis on retaining them."

The Indian government has long complained of a "brain drain" to the United States, particularly since the H-1B program opened the door to plentiful U.S. visas. But what's often overlooked is the experience of engineers like Agarwal, Bose and others, who return home after earning advanced degrees or taking jobs in North America, bringing with them the knowledge they have gained.

For thousands of young Indian engineers, entering the United States for postgraduate education is the easy way to reach America and its high-tech industry. Grad school tends to be a fairly simple task for the well-educated EEs trained at the various Indian Institutes of Technology, who usually have no trouble getting employment or finding U.S. companies to sponsor their work permits once they graduate.

Earning an MS in the United States wasn't hard for Agarwal. "It was much easier getting good grades" at the University of Minnesota, where he went for graduate studies, than at IIT-Kanpur, Agarwal said. "At the IITs, the level of competition is an order of magnitude higher than what I saw in the United States."

Bose too graduated from IIT-Kanpur and left India in 1992 to finish his MS at the University of Pennsylvania. He then worked with Alliance Semiconductor in San Jose, Calif., on a PC-to-TV interface and a Fast Ethernet product.

After graduating from Minnesota, Agarwal joined Wafer Scale Integration, now a division of STMicroelectronics, where he spent most of his time doing research on flash-memory chips. Agarwal was part of a team that worked on designing a new architecture — the group reduced the size of a decoder along with the time it took to decode, and configured a row decoder capable of mapping the bad rows to the extra rows built into the chip. ST recently patented the design on grounds of cost efficiency, faster accessibility and redundancy, Agarwal said.

Still, not all the EEs who want to return to India actually do. Bose and Agarwal pointed to one of a group of four IIT grads who, like them, planned to come back but hasn't made it yet.

"He has been in the final stages of moving back for some time," Bose said. "Of the Indians I knew in the United Sates, most — say, 70 percent — talked about going back to India. But they were not serious enough. And, they kept grumbling about it at different stages of their stay there."

According to Bose, not enough information is coming from India about the opportunities here. He sees a need for an organization, government-sponsored or private, that would make available information on the industry and on procedures in India, and generally help homeward-bound Indians to settle in.

For those that do come back, the opportunities are limitless, said Agarwal. "The only thing missing here [in India] is experience," he said. Indian EEs who have lived abroad and gained "five to 10 years of experience in VLSI design" will find "they could make it really big" back home.

That's because, in contrast to the huge, advanced industry in the United States, the younger Indian electronics industry provides a more wide-open environment, the two engineers said. This is especially true in the IT sector and in layout design, according to Agarwal.

"India will take the same route Israel has taken. There was a lot of R&D happening there. Although the returns were low in the beginning, they have picked up now and the industry there has proved itself by establishing world-class companies," he said. "There are areas, like layout design, which can become big in India. And, such work is already done on a big scale in countries like Israel. Layout design does not require skills obtained through the university — it's more of a drafting job, which could be acquired by doing a [short-course] program for six months."

Companies like ST and Wafer Scale are eager to outsource their work, according to Agarwal. "Because Indians have a strong presence in the silicon companies in the United States, these companies are waiting for the Indian IT and software industry to become mature enough to handle VLSI design," he said.

Aside from the professional possibilities, the attraction of familiar surroundings is another lure for Indian engineers abroad. Said Bose of the reasons behind his decision to return, "My desire to be more creative and productive in India — and to come back to people I know — were the more important ones."

Bose helped co-found Design Expo, but soon left the company to become a professor at IIT-Delhi. The teaching profession, he said, is "closer to my heart" than corporate life.

Bose thinks that a short-term move to the United States is an attractive proposition for Indian engineers in terms of money earned as well as job experience. However, he also believes that fresh graduates are not able to make an informed decision. Little hard information about education and work outside India has been gathered, collated and formally presented, he said, except by the commercial arms of foreign universities.

"Not much of what they [new grads] hear [about life in the United States] is true," Bose said. "But they are at that impressionable age when they think that it's the ultimate goal."

Agarwal advises Indian engineering graduates to go for postgraduate work. "Don't take up a job right away," he said. "Doing a master's [degree] adds a lot of value in terms of organization skills."

However, the trend to catch the first flight out of India is showing signs of abating, at least at IIT-Delhi. About 60 to 70 percent of the institute's bachelor of technology (B. Tech) graduates are staying put, according to Bose. "This is a definite reversal of the trend at IIT-Delhi," he said. "Today, companies recruiting B. Techs within India are also paying handsome salaries. So, many students are staying back."

The picture is different at other IITs, however. "In IIT-Madras, for example, I estimate 60 to 70 percent of the B. Techs are still going [abroad]," Bose said.

Yet in his view, the trend for emigré Indian engineers to one day return home has just begun.

"It is a trickle now, but it will gather momentum," Bose predicted.

Vivek Nanda is editor of EE Times Asia, a sister publication of EE Times.