Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: The Making of a Transnati ...

Introduction

Indians in the software industry have caught the imagination of a developing nation looking for heroes to herald their standing in a global world, of observers in Silicon Valley marveling at the rise of an immigrant community, of corporations aiming to find ever new sources of labor, and of researchers wanting to empirically witness the processes of globalization. A steady, quiet, almost unnoticed flow of nearly 3 decades of skilled labor between India and the United States, beginning in the post-1965 period of immigration reform, has culminated by the turn of a new millennium into a significant force, operating at the upper echelons of the hi-tech industry and in the global center of technological in-novation—Silicon Valley. It is not mere coincidence that at the same time that technologically talented Indians were making their presence felt in Silicon Valley, their brethren in Bangalore were making this unknown city in southern India the center of a developing nation’s hi-tech industry.