'60,000 Indian IT pros in US have returned'

The country's fast growing economy and leaping information technology sector is attracting home more and more Indian professionals from the Silicon Valley. The Indus Entrepreneur Group (TIE) estimates that around 60,000 may have returned in recent years, a media report said today.

No region of the United States has been more affected by this trend than Silicon Valley. TIE had reported in 2003 that between 15,000 and 20,000 Indians had returned and charter member of the organization Vish Mishra told San Jose Mercury News that the trend had continued and about 40,000 more had gone back in the last four years.

Mishra, who is a senior venture partner with Clearstone Ventures, said the flow of investment capital to India also has expanded, much of it from Silicon Valley VC firms.

Clearstone Venture Partners now has an office in Mumbai, as do many other firms that either are based in or originated in Silicon Valley.

During the 12-month period that ended in August 2006, Mishra told the paper, VC firms invested $2 billion in early and late-stage companies. The report quotes a study released earlier this year by Anna-Lee Saxenian of the University of California-Berkeley and by Duke University, as saying Indians founded 15% of all Silicon Valley start-ups.

The study also found that 53% of the science and engineering workforce in the valley is foreign-born, and that one-quarter of immigrant-founded engineering and scientific companies set up in the United States during the past decade were by Indians.