For the first time in at least 50 years, there are more people leaving the United States than entering it. According to The Brookings Institution, around 4 lakh people left the US voluntarily last year, thanks to a volatile political climate, the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, and high cost of living.
However, one Indian immigrant to the United States feels Americans leaving their country are making a big mistake.
Arvind Jain, the founder and CEO of AI-powered enterprise search platform Glean and a former Google engineer, says that America remains the land of opportunity despite recent challenges.
‘Land of opportunity’
Speaking to Fortune magazine, the IIT Delhi-educated entrepreneur said that the US is the best place for entrepreneurs to build.
“There are certain things in the US today that are challenging,” Jain told Fortune. “But I think it remains the land of opportunity. It remains the place where entrepreneurship is celebrated.”
Jain himself moved from Jaipur to the US in 1986, armed with a degree from IIT Delhi. Jain spent over 10 years at Google as a Distinguished Engineer, working on products including Google Search, Maps, and YouTube.
After Google, he founded two unicorns — one of them is the cloud data company Rubri. The other is Glean, currently valued at around $7.2 billion.
(Also read: Arvind Jain, IITian founder of $7.2 billion company, says AI will never replace single employee)
‘You will find investors’
According to the Indian-American founder, America is the only country where one can build a billion-dollar company. Jain told Fortune that even entrepreneurs with little experience can find backers in the US.
“You can just graduate from college, have no experience, but if you have an idea, you will find people who will be willing to invest in you,” he said. “I think all of those things remain intact.”
His sentiments were echoed by Anagha Rajesh, the founder of BioCompute who is shutting down her Indian operations and shifting base to San Francisco.
In an interview with Vyom Bhatia, Anagha Rajesh explained that she is moving to San Francisco because “people there got the point of what I was doing”. They understood her long-term vision and wanted to remove the challenges she faced, rather than worrying about revenue.
“They [the people in San Francisco] were not as concerned about revenue. They were more concerned about what I would need to follow this through,” said the founder of BioCompute.
(Also read: BioCompute founder Anagha Rajesh shuts Bengaluru op and moves to US, explains why: ‘India is not ready’)
In her blog post, she expounded upon this theme by saying that the Indian ecosystem is not ready for their product.
“While India is now starting to invest in deep tech through RDI fund and the likes, we don’t think the ecosystem is ready for a product like ours.”
