Ashish: Cost of living in India is much lower. Disposable income in India is much higher, especially for senior positions. Salaries for senior positions are around 70% of the salaries in the US but translate to much higher savings. For example, you can get a 4000 sq ft house on rent for $1000 in top Indian cities like Bangalore. Availability of domestic help frees up a lot of time.
Amrit: When I moved back to start Zetwerk, I took 1/5th of my US salary and it was still fine.
Hemant: We have built a Cost of Living calculator that you can access here.
Ashish: There were some hard times. When I was building a house and had to interact with government agencies - taking that on as a project was a bad experience. But overall I feel much more empowered, and I am able to contribute to society here. My wife has been able to have a great clinical practice and says that the contribution and impact is way larger than what she could have had in the US.
Subbu and Akanksha: We faced some challenges in hiring given that the average age of talent is lower in India but it can be worked around.
Siddharth, Talent head at Lightspeed: Reach out to talent leaders in VCs who can easily connect you with portfolio companies. All VCs have a career page and there are multiple platforms for the startup ecosystem. Things drop off when people are exploring but do not have a clear vision on the company, stage, or sector they want to join. Also, if you are planning to move 1-2yrs later, starting a career conversation today won’t be as meaningful (except for some really key roles that take time to hire for).
Subbu: You cannot jump from one moving train to another. I recommend people to take a sabbatical of 2-3 months, come to India and see if it fits.
Hemant: A lot of it depends on intentionality. As you talk to VCs and companies, it is important to make up your mind on moving back first.
Hena: I have used the '$30K rule'. If people have $30K in their bank, then they should just move.
All: This is not an important factor and people should not think too much about it. Amrit went to business school and had student debt and still was able to manage.
Hena: As a woman, there are some things I need to take care of in India. I have to be mindful of my attire at times, which is sometimes annoying. These things are easier in the US.
Ashish: My daughter was born in India so it was easier here from a schooling point of view. India has a lot of schooling options (international/alternative schools) with forward mindsets. Moving around in India is very easy with like minded communities.
Hemant: If your client base is eventually going to be in the US, it does mean that at some point you need to have a co-founder or a VP sales/product in the US. Potential SaaS founders have to think hard about why they want to build from India. There are lots of advantages of building out from India: the average high quality engineer or PM here costs 1/3rd of that in SF. You can build a fully functional salesforce in India, as many successful companies such as Postman, Freshworks and Clevertap have done. However, if you are building a core enterprise infrastructure company such as Nutanix, you would need to build a bulk of your company in the US post series A/B.
Ashish: All Indian companies were viewed as family run businesses 10-12 years back but I was very surprised by the culture at Flipkart, which was very liberating. Corporate culture has evolved in the last 6-7 years which is the most positive change. India is operating at a global level in this respect now.
Nirmit: There are some cultural challenges but the positive side is that culture is more emotional than transactional. I saw people go through life crises at work at times and the whole coworker group spent the entire night to help them out.
Nirmit: We run a deep tech lab from Ahmedabad. If you already have a network in T-2 cities, you can build something interesting in a non-metro.
Ashish: My parents were in Chandigarh and I tried to start something there with friends but found it very hard to get high quality talent. If you groom them well, this talent will eventually move to metros.
Nipun: Companies have started moving development centres to Goa and Chandigarh. Delhivery has a tech-centre in Goa, and I find a lot of folks now are looking to move to cities other than Delhi and Bangalore.
Hena: I wouldn't say it was hard. Just find a good CA, it is not expensive. It is not harder than doing it anywhere else, but you should be ready to accept some inefficiency.
Hena: No major challenge.
Amrit: Becoming an NBFC (Non-banking Financial Company) takes 6-9 months, but the government was never a bottleneck otherwise.
Siddharth: $250K compensation can be found in growth stage companies for revenue, business, CTO and product roles.
Subbu: India is no more the India of 20 years ago. ‘Chalta hai’ or ‘jugaad’ attitude was present 10 years ago, but now there is an urgency to build and grow.
Ashish: Today, Indian-origin companies and India-based centers of US companies fully realise the need to operate at world-class cultural standards to attract and retain global talent and customers. Native companies such as Flipkart, Freshdesk and InMobi and the India centers of global companies such as Qubole, Rubrik and Amazon have built homegrown, high-quality cultures. Values such as meritocracy, transparency and integrity are very much part of India now. This has also percolated into the startups, whose founders have originated from these companies. Now you are more likely to run into a world-class professional set of people.
Ashish: There are enough international schools imparting high quality education (comparable to international standards) and this was not an issue. Come Home And Build also has a video episode on this topic that you can view here.
Akansha: Metros are very urbanised. For me the Mumbai (Bandra) experience is the same as New York. As a woman, I prefer Mumbai and Bangalore over Delhi. Mumbai is one of the safest cities in the world in my opinion.
Manjot: There is a slight difference between US and India and one needs to adjust and know what things you can do safely.
Subbu: For me, it is rare to have calls setup at night more than 2 times a month.