India’s contribution to the Silicon Valley cannot be understated, given the fact that so many
pioneers and thought leaders of information technology (IT) trace their origin to this Asian
country.
The first person of Indian origin (PIO) to leave his footprint on this sector was Vinod Dham,
referred to as the man behind the Intel Pentium processor.
His success was followed by that of Sabeer Bhatia who founded the famous email service,
Hotmail, of Microsoft.
This was, however, way back. Even until the late 1990s, the number of Indians working in the IT
sector in the US was not substantial enough. All that changed with the Y2K glitch and other
positive developments in favor of India, which brought them to the United States in hordes.
A survey conducted by Stanford Law School and Saxenian in 2007 found that among the
immigrants, Indians floated the largest number of technology start-ups in the US.
A report by the Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford
University found that barring Apple, Indians occupied senior positions in all IT firms. It has been
found that 33% of employees of the technology behemoth Microsoft are Indians!
2014 was a watershed year as Microsoft appointed their first overseas CEO, who was a PIO by
the name Satya Nadella.
Prior to that, Shantanu Narayen, another man who emigrated from India, was made the CEO of
Adobe. Meanwhile, Sundar Pichai is the senior vice president, Google, the Chrome and apps
division, among others.
There are many other PIOs who hold key positions in top companies.
Besides all of this, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, among others, have their development
centers in India. All of these developments were largely possible because of the large English
speaking talent in that country. This is where it scores over China and European countries,
barring the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In addition, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm in terms of market
valuation, is reportedly the third largest employer in this sector in the world, with a strength of
300,000! Forbes magazine had ranked this particular company 40th worldwide in its most
innovative companies list for the year 2013.
Bengaluru (Bangalore), India’s IT hub, witnesses so much technological activity that it has
earned it the sobriquet the ‘Silicon Valley of India’. The other major IT centers in India are in
cities, such as Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Pune, etc.
Resource box: This article by Ravi Namboori, a Cisco evangelist, discusses the major
contributions made by India and its non-resident population, residing in the USA, to the field of
information technology. Although initially minor, they have now made IT field what it is today.
