When Borders Tighten, Talent Finds New Paths

I read Piyush Goyal’s reaction to the H‑1B fee hike with a mixture of wry satisfaction and urgent resolve. He said — and I quote the tone rather than the exact words — that the reaction in Washington shows they are “a little afraid of our talent” and urged NRIs to innovate in India (Times of India). That line struck a chord because this moment validates a pattern I have been writing about for years: global shocks and policy pivots that push talent and opportunity back to India.

What happened — in blunt numbers — is obvious: a new U.S. proclamation set a one‑time H‑1B application fee at $100,000, a level higher than the annual salaries of many professionals and a direct disincentive for employers to sponsor broadly (Times of India analysis). The immediate effects are predictable: panic travel bookings, firms asking staff to return, and small and medium employers reconsidering sponsorship models. But the medium‑term effect matters far more — capital, projects and people will look for alternative, lower‑friction ways to get work done.

That alternative is not merely remote work. It is an opportunity to build more of the value chain in India — product teams, R&D hubs, startups and platforms that scale here and sell globally. I have argued this theme in several past notes: the "Winds of Change" sweeping India that remove regulatory friction and invite investment (Winds of Change); the push to buy and make in India (Buy Made in India); and the idea that our engineering talent can be the foundation of a much larger services and product economy (Leveraging our Engineering Talent).

Take a moment to notice something important: I had sketched versions of this trajectory years ago — predicting that when global policy or economic winds shift, India’s deep bench of engineers and entrepreneurs would be the natural landing place. That pattern is not coincidence; it is structural. Seeing it come to pass now is validating, and it sharpens the urgency to act on those earlier ideas.

Practical contours of this moment

• Talent return and hybrid hubs: Some H‑1B holders will literally return. Others will establish dual footprints — a product HQ or R&D node in India and sales/support teams in the U.S. That creates a higher value‑add than purely offshore delivery.
• Corporate strategy shift: Expect more MNC investment in India teams and centers. I have documented how multinationals have grown India units into large, high‑margin operations (MNC hiring in India). This shift becomes accelerating when the cost of moving people to the U.S. rises sharply.
• Startups and productisation: When talent and capital are in India, more engineers will prefer building products and startups. India’s domestic market pull — aided by policies and a greater tendency to buy local — will make that attractive (Make in India / Buy Made in India).
• Platforms and marketplaces: The idea of a national or global jobs platform — something like the "OnlineJobsFair" I once sketched — becomes far more than an experiment; it becomes infrastructure to match global gigs to Indian teams at scale (Seeing opportunity / OnlineJobsFair idea).

Why this moment matters for policy and entrepreneurs

I’ve written about coupling policy reforms (ease of doing business, competitive federalism) to incentives for domestic manufacturing and services — not as abstract policy prescriptions but as practical enablers of private investment (Winds of Change). The H‑1B shock is a policy nudge from another country. We must convert that nudge into our advantage by:

• Accelerating regulatory simplification where it still slows founders and firms.
• Building financing and talent pipelines that make India a natural home for product R&D, not only low‑cost teams.
• Encouraging returning NRIs and diaspora founders with targeted incentives — tax clarity, seed capital vehicles, and simplified cross‑border IP and company structures.

A personal note of encouragement

I don’t enjoy seeing people forced to uproot plans because of geopolitical whims. But I do believe in agency. When barriers rise on one side, create bridges on the other. The current headlines are a clarifying event: they expose assumptions many companies made about borderless talent flows. Those assumptions are changing. My earlier essays — from proposing ways to channel GST benefits into citizen savings to sketching how India could move from services arbitrage to product leadership — were attempts to prepare for moments like this (GST ideas and Jan Dhan Sarjan proposals). Today, they feel oddly timely.

This is not a boast. It’s a call to attention. The world will keep changing; what matters is whether we build the institutions, incentives and platforms so that Indian talent and Indian firms capture the upside.

---

Regards,
Hemen Parekh