20
November
2009
|
04:04 AM
America/Los_Angeles

The 'i' In Silicon Valley - New Study Shows Strength of Ties With India

Indian entrepreneurs are everywhere in Silicon Valley. And a new report on the Bay Area Indian community measures the ties between Silicon Valley and India.

Here are some facts from the report, "Global Reach," by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute:

- Indian entrepreneurs helped found many Silicon Valley companies such as Sun Microsystems, Tibco Software, Brocade, Cerent and Hotmail.

- As a measure of its success, the median income in the Bay Area's Indian community is more than $107,000.

- 75% of adults have at least a bachelors degree.

- 70% are in management or professional positions.

- More than 40 Bay Area venture firms have Indian leadership and/or activity in India.

Silicon Valley/Bay Area has very close ties to India:

- Visa has issued more than 30 million debit cards and 32 million credit cards to Indian consumers.

- India hosts Symantec's largest engineering si.te outside the US, and works on more than 80% of its products.

- India accounts for one third of Adobe's global engineering workforce.

- Hewlett Packard is the largest player in India's IT market.

- Levi Strauss has 450 exclusive outlets in 80 Indian cities.

- Cisco second global headquarters is in Bangalore.

The report states: "The combination of Bay Area innovation and capital with India's engineering talent, it finds, can be a formidable one in global markets."

The report says that there are issues such as immigration reform:

"An Indian with an advanced degree can wait as long as five years before his or her application for a green card (permanent residence) is even considered. This makes no sense when opportunities in India are beckoning and other countries are aggressively competing for the same talent."

Please see: BayAreaEconomy.org