The Voice
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For
India's Tech Grads, There's No Place Like Home |
FEBRUARY 3, 2003
COVER STORY:- Business Week
For India's Tech Grads, There's No Place Like Home
Who needs Silicon Valley when Bangalore offers fulfilling work
and an upwardly mobile lifestyle?
Time was, the career path for any Indian whiz kid with ambition
and a degree in electrical engineering from one of the country's
top technology institutes was clear. These young engineers headed
straight for Silicon Valley, Boston, or Austin, Tex., to work
at a premier U.S. semiconductor company. Then, after years in
the lab, the most talented--and lucky--among them might befriend
an Indian venture capitalist and start up a new chip company.
No longer. These days, India's best and brightest tech minds
need move no farther than Bangalore, where they can do cutting-edge
work for the rapidly expanding labs of Intel, Texas Instruments,
Hewlett-Packard, and other tech giants. India has some 7,500 chip
designers working for 65 companies, and their ranks are swelling
by 20% a year. Their pay, starting at $8,000 to $10,000 annually,
may be a pittance compared with what's available in Silicon Valley.
But in India, it's enough to enjoy a comfortable, fulfilling life.
Ask Dharin Shah. Tall, rail-thin, and with intense dark eyes,
26-year-old Shah sees his $10,000-a-year job at Texas Instruments
Inc. as the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The son of a Gujarat
government bank employee, Shah graduated near the top of his class
at Bangalore's prestigious Indian Institute of Science, where
he earned a master's in instrumentation engineering. Today, Shah
is making a name for himself as a member of a 15-engineer team
designing custom chips for next-generation cell phones and telecom
routers and switches, a core TI business. "He has depth,
innovates, and solves problems that sometimes even senior folks
in Dallas [TI's headquarters] miss," says his project manager,
R. Harinath.
His position and his salary place Shah well within India's upwardly
mobile middle class. With a moped and an apartment in a decent
building, "I don't feel the need" to move to the U.S.,
says Shah. On weekends, he indulges his passions for cycling and
bird-watching in the lush woods near Bangalore and volunteers
as a mathematics and science teacher at a home for girls from
poor families. "The opportunity is here in India, and I need
to contribute to society," he says.
These days, India has legions of talented engineers who, like
Shah, are willing to forsake the glamour and financial gratification
of Silicon Valley to stay close to home. That's a big reason why
Indian cities such as Bangalore seem destined to emerge as the
hottest innovation zones of the 21st century. And chip companies
aren't the only ones recruiting Indian talent. Microsoft Corp.,
for example, is hiring 10 software engineers like Gaurav Daga
every month. Daga, 22, develops software for Microsoft from a
teak-paneled, air-conditioned office in Hyderabad--a far cry from
the dilapidated industrial area in Madras where his father works
as a metals trader. "Microsoft was my first, second, and
third choice" for a job, Daga says.
The shift is chipping away at India's conservative mind-set.
While some parents object to their daughters entering the male-dominated
engineering world, for example, others embrace the opportunity
it gives them. Sindhu Kumar, 25, one of only 20 women in her college
engineering class of 400, is already a project leader at Wipro
Technologies, fast emerging as one of the world's top contract
engineering houses for Western electronics companies. Her current
task: speeding up and improving the print quality of Hewlett-Packard
Co.'s inkjet printers. Kumar's opportunities far exceed those
available to her father, an engineer who could only land a job
as a civil servant in Uttar Pradesh. Soon, she plans to buy a
car for her parents "to give something back to them, finally,
for all the support they gave me."
Almost without exception, India's young engineers want to give
something back--both to their families and to their country. "There's
a lot of idealism among these young Indians," says Rukmini
Bhaya Nair, a professor of humanities at the Indian Institute
of Technology in New Delhi. They're "the new magicians for
India." If engineers and young professionals like Shah and
Kumar continue to work their magic, the biggest payback may well
be the development of their country.
By Manjeet Kripalani in Bangalore
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