6 months later: Return to India after 15yrs in the US
I got a great response from my Return to India: a decision framework. Every week or so, I meet a founder who asks me how my transition back has been, so this article was inevitable. For the uninitiated, I spent 2003–2018 outside of India, primarily in USA (14yrs) and UK (1yr) studying and then working in companies such as AMD (engineering),
(bizdev), and
(VC) and returned to India July’18 to join
as a Partner. I intend to write a series of “letters” here discussing my experiences moving back.
The big Q 1 of 2: how was it?
Living in India is just. plain. awesome! Family, friends, hospitality, tourism (in/around SE Asia), and the overall quality of life (subjectively) is much higher for me here. There are challenges that are apparent (traffic) and inherent (pollution) but both solvable (see later in the article).
The big learning for me is that the why of moving to India is way more important than the when and the how. There are two types of people who tend to be unhappy once they return:
- Those who had a hole in their life — be it a lack of social life, career, mid-life crisis— in the US and thought moving to India would somehow magically fill it. That doesn’t work — you’ll carry that hole with you.
- Those who keep one foot in each boat and “try & buy” the India experience. They end up comparing an itemized list of experiences between the two countries without realizing it’s not an apples to apples.
The big Q 2of 2: what did you optimize for?
Unless you are returning to India for starting up (talk to me if you are!), for a working professional, besides the right kind of job+salary, there are probably 3 things that impact the quality of life:
a) which city do you choose to live in (for family, friends, work etc)
b) time to/from office (ideally < 30mins each way)
c) where do you live (gym access, school/hospitals nearby, gated, etc).
If these three work out, rest follows a time for hobbies, money for travel, entertainment, etc.
The one thing that allows you to optimize for the good and avoid the bad?
Easy answer is “salary”, but this is where most people falter.
The trick is to know just how much should you make to most closely recreate a parallel lifestyle for what you had in the US. Instead of offering you my subjective opinion, I have done you one better and created a “move to India” salary calculator here to help you decide based on your current comp and lifestyle.
Presenting: The Returning Indian Salary Calculator
There are many vectors in a typical cost of living but I used to rent as a % of your total salary as the best representation of your “quality of life”. I know, I know, there are better ways, but this one is mine 🙂 Also, it’s bay-area specific. You are welcome to copy the original gDoc and edit to your needs. Just plug in your US salary, and your current monthly rent, then select your India city of choice + size of your house and out comes a result. Here’s a fictional entry:
Note that the table won’t get everyone the right data; there are obvious corner cases I don’t cover (e.g. if you earn 1M$/yr and spend just 1k/mo in rent, you’ll get absurd results). However, if you are an average techie earning, say, 150K/yr and spending 2k/mo in rent, you would be better served. YMMV.
Now, a few interesting observations about India
For those that don’t know me well, I went to the US in 2003 and have been visiting India 1–2 times a year till 2014 and often 3+ times a year since 2014 due to my father’s passing and my desire to start shifting my focus back home. So, I’ve been able to observe the small shifts better than most locals did, and of course, the macro-trends that are now obvious to most.
- India fintech is way, way ahead of the US/EU. For offline, there were weeks I didn’t use cash — most places take cards, payTM, UPI, and a dozen other options. I’ve seen panipuri wallahs in Bangalore use PayTM. For online, I use UPI for most online purchases or just a direct bank-xfer (called Netbanking here). Can’t believe I am saying this but online purchases in India feels easier via UPI in India vs CCs or PayPal in US.
- Every service over-communicates over SMSes. Most of this is useful: e.g. txn-related info or auth (2FA) is common. There’s a bunch of spam you get but the service numbers used for auth/txns are different from those used for marketing, so I just block the marketing numbers.
- Things that many Indians may find frustrating bring a smile to my face. Ever so often you find someone on a flight who asks how to use the seat buckle, or you get stuck behind someone in an ATM line who doesn’t know how to use the kiosk too well. These are all 1st time users — reasons I moved back for!
- Day to day frustrations from a year ago seem to be lesser of an issue. For example, just in Feb’18, I tweeted about having to call my driver after every Uber booking to get him to start moving! Now, cars show up at the location 90% of the time on their own. Cancellations from drivers also rare (peak hours may be a pain still). I don’t have an apartment yet, but I know paying electric, landline, water bills are now all online.
- Unless you are into fancy imported stuff, or luxuries, most daily expenses are way cheaper. Ubers cost around 2–5$ for a 30–60min ride. A decent Indian meal on Swiggy is around 2–4$ (free delivery). Similarly for groceries, furniture, books, etc. The list of 50 books I wanted in the US for 600$ second hand? I bought almost all of them from India for roughly 200$ first hand. In Bangalore, $1K will get you a 3–4BR in a gated community w/ gym, pool and sports facility access — e.g., Adarsh Palm Retreat. I know DEL/BOM is not as cheap though and the calculator takes that into account. A 3–4BR in SF ranges from $2–5k/mo.
- Learning a new skill is actually easier in India as long as you are diligent about keeping time for it. Guitar, Gym, Yoga, Art, Language teachers all will come to your home on a weekend and spend 2hrs a week to teach you a skill for 50–100$/mo or less. In SF a gym trainer was 75–80$/hr (+the gym membership fee). My cello teacher was 65$/hr (I drove to him).
- Cellular network speeds are awesome! I use Reliance Jio and pay ~2–3$/mo for 2GB/day of LTE data (unlimited data costs a bit more but I never finish mine anyway), usually at 10–15Mbps (down) and 2–4Mbps (up). My AT&T home WiFi was 70$/mo with 8–9Mbps (down), 1–2Mbps (up). Cellular was similar speeds to India but 70–80$/mo for 5–6Gb/month vs India’s 2Gb/day!
Things that irritate me still?
- Standing for the national anthem at movies! Why do we still have this?!
- Civic sense is still abysmal — people throw trash around, spitting is still a thing, people sometimes cut in line at counters (but mostly at roadside shops, not at movie halls or malls), etc.
- The political situation — although way better than the US — is still bitter and spiteful on a good day.
- For the lack of good governance in many areas, there is too much governance in areas where startups should be given more free rein to fail, break things, etc. A recent example is the angel tax fiasco. I hear the government is getting better at this but a long way to go.
What do I plan to do to avoid the daily hassles?
- Live as close to the office as possible. Pay up for it. Think of it as you investing time back into your life.
- I know this is controversial but try to reduce the lure of the “house help”: they are great when they work out but if not, they can be a nightmare. Once I get a place of my own, I plan to invest into a few Roomba devices for vacuuming, a high-quality dishwasher for the kitchen, and a great combo washer-dryer for clothes. At most, I’ll get a cook or find a way to get home-cooked meals delivered at home.
- Avoid getting a car till you absolutely need to. Ubers / Olas make getting around a piece of cake at pretty low rates.
- Avoid buying a house too soon — renting (at least in BLR) is a no-brainer and buying is no longer a financial decision it once was given different asset classes have similar ROIs at no variable costs and higher liquidity.
Final thoughts
Overall, I couldn’t be happier with my move. I feel lucky to be in SE Asia / India at a time many of the growing pains have subsided and the startup ecosystem feels a lot more mature (more on that in a future post). As a VC, I wanted to be somewhere I could look back 10yrs out and feel like I made a difference and I strongly believe that with a lot of hard work and a dash of good fortune, I have a chance to make such an impact on India in 10 years. Moreover, from a macro POV, India is now globally #3 in terms of GDP by PPP and also #3 in the world for software projects checked into GitHub.
There is clearly an opportunity, ability to pay and the intent to build for the white-spaces. Rest is upon the founders, the VCs, and hopefully pleasant tailwinds 🙂 Here’s to the next 10 years. Happy 2019, everyone — let’s crush it!
PS: If you are an entrepreneur planning to service India/APAC, feel free to drop me a deck at submit.lsip.com!
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