PDF: 2962 pages, 5.2 MB - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

Global Reach
The Bay Area exerted a strong pull on newly-arrived Indian engineers and programmers. Workers
were choosing to extend their stays; students came to pursue graduate opportunities were unavailable
back home. Indian firms had, up to that point, relied heavily on returning engineers and programmers
with updated skills to advance their own capabilities. The brain drain that began in the
late 1990s slowed that transfer and limited Indian firms’ competitiveness.
Several factors have quietly reversed this brain drain since 2000, among them:
• the unexpectedly quick resolution of Y2K issues;
• shrinking U.S. job prospects after the bursting of the tech bubble over 2000–01;
• increased travel fears and visa restrictions after the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.;
• restricted availability of H-1B visas and green cards;
• increasing economic opportunity in India; and
• a desire building abroad to return home, start families, and “give back” to Indian society.
By 2003, IT work in India had moved up the value chain to include more product development,
and Indian IT firms had also begun to achieve global scale. New transnationals were entering the
market and looking to India, along with Israel and Ireland, to lower their development costs and
access engineering and programming talent. Projects increased in scale and dollar value. India’s
IT industry has since grown from $21.6 billion in 2004 to $48 billion in 2007, and reached over
$71 billion in 2008.
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