The Grass is Indeed Greener in India and China for Returnee Entrepreneurs: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part VI

The report, “The Grass is Indeed Greener in India and China for Returnee Entrepreneurs,” is based on a survey of U.S.-educated Indian and Chinese professionals who had returned to their home countries and started businesses. These respondents cited economic opportunities, favorable conditions for starting a business and the speed of professional growth as the leading motivations for returning home. Family ties also played a significant role in attracting the entrepreneurs back to their native countries.

Over the past decade, poverty and underdevelopment—the “brain drain” factors that once drove the vast majority of U.S.-educated immigrants to remain here rather than returning home—have given way to startup-friendly business environments in India and China. Most returnees now say the entrepreneurial advantages are better in their home countries, where they can benefit from lower operating costs, heightened professional recognition, greater access to local markets, and a better quality of life than they could attain in the United States.

However, the survey results also indicate that, while returnees’ migration back to their home countries produces a “reverse brain drain” in the United States, these entrepreneurs maintain close relationships with U.S.-based colleagues, family, friends, and sources of business information. These data suggest a two-way “brain circulation” with potential benefit to both the United States and these emerging economies.

The survey’s key findings include:

• More than 60 percent of Indian and 90 percent of Chinese respondents cited economic opportunities in their countries as a very important factor in motivating the return home.
• The returnees took pride in contributing to economic development in their home countries. More than 60 percent of Indians and 51 percent of Chinese rated this as very important. Fifty-six percent of Indians and 59 percent of Chinese said their quality of life back home was better or equal to what they had experienced in the United States.
• In China, 76 percent ranked access to local markets as very important. In India, 64 percent did.
• Salaries were the only advantage the respondents attributed to the United States. Sixty-four percent of the Indian respondents said their salaries were better in the United States than at home. Forty-three percent of Chinese respondents said that salaries were higher in the United States, while 20 percent stated they were about the same in the United States and China.