Reverse Migrant Entrepreneurs in India: Motivations, Trajectories and Realities

Abstract

In recent years, India has seen thousands of highly skilled workers heading back to its shores from the USA, the UK and other countries. By one estimate, more than 60,000 Indian professionals returned to India in 2009–2010 alone, the majority of them IT professionals. This trend is expected to continue as many more professionals, pulled by economic opportunities and family ties in India and pushed by recessionary conditions and immigration issues in advanced western nations, continue to return over the next few years. While the majority return to jobs, a smaller group go back to start businesses. As these ‘reverse migrant entrepreneurs’ come back home, they bring a unique combination of transnational knowledge and assets, deploying these in entrepreneurial ventures in the home country, generating jobs and other economic activity, and in this way, they play a key role in the dynamics of reverse migration. As skilled reverse migration to India continues to grow, the motivations, trajectories and experiences of these entrepreneurs need to be understood. This chapter explores these aspects through interviews with 18 skilled migrant professionals turned entrepreneurs in Kolkata and Bengaluru, who returned to India from the USA and the UK, and who, prior to moving back, had studied full time and/or worked full time for at least 1 year in the USA or the UK and had been developing or running the business in India for at least a year.