‘Come Back Home’: Sridhar Vembu Urges Indians in the US to Return

Sridhar Vembu is not the sort of billionaire who sends letters from a corner office. On most mornings, the co-founder of Zoho Corporation cycles through the paddy fields of Tenkasi, a small district in rural Tamil Nadu, barefoot and unhurried. So when he took to X this week to address Indians living in the United States, the message carried real weight. This was not boardroom posturing. It was a call from someone who had already made the choice he is now asking of others.

"As difficult as it is for many of you to contemplate this, please come back home," he wrote, addressing the Indian diaspora directly. "Bharat Mata needs your talent. Our vast youthful population needs the technology leadership you gained over the years to guide them towards prosperity."

The timing of the letter is far from accidental. The Indian professional in America is navigating an increasingly hostile terrain, and the data confirms it on multiple fronts.

The $100,000 Moment

On 19 September 2025, President Trump signed a presidential proclamation titled "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers." It took effect at 12:01 a.m. on 21 September 2025. From that moment, employers were required to pay a one-time $100,000 fee per new H-1B petition, up from between $2,000 and $5,000 previously. That is a 20-to-50 times increase, depending on company size.

The fee has rattled employers of every size. The founder of Greycroft Partners stated publicly that not a single company in his portfolio over the past decade could absorb such a cost. Early-career workers, recent graduates on OPT, and workers from lower-wage sectors effectively find the H-1B path closed.

"If India remains poor, the woke left will give us moral lectures with pity and the hard right with scorn. We must not confuse either with respect." Sridhar Vembu, Zoho co-founder, open letter on X, April 2026

The Hostility is Documented, Not Imagined

Vembu describes a growing sense that Indians "take away" American jobs. The numbers on this are striking. A survey found that 56% of Americans believe H-1B holders are taking jobs from US workers.

Anti-Indian content online rose sharply in 2025. Between July and September alone, over 24,600 posts on X targeted Indians, each getting at least 10 likes and together reaching more than 281 million views.

Most of this activity came from the United States, where nearly 70% of posts portrayed Indians as “invaders” or “job thieves.”

This is not purely online. In February 2026, protesters appeared at a Texas city council meeting to oppose what they called the "massive takeover of Indians" in the city of Frisco. Stop AAPI Hate documented a surge in anti-South Asian incidents, with more than 75% of anti-Asian slurs targeting South Asians in late 2024 and early 2025.

The Carnegie Endowment's 2026 Indian American Attitudes Survey found that 71% of Indian Americans disapprove of Trump's presidency. 40% have considered leaving the US at some point, with frustration at US politics cited as the top reason by 58% of that group.

The Scale of What India Has Lost

Vembu's argument is that individual professional success abroad is not a substitute for national technological strength. The numbers behind India's brain drain make that argument concrete.

Between 2015 and 2024, over 1.3 million Indians renounced their citizenship, many of them in high-skilled sectors. India spends just 0.65% of GDP on research and development, compared to 2.7% in China and 3.5% in the United States. That gap makes the outflow of scientific talent self-reinforcing: the less India invests in research, the less it can retain its most ambitious researchers.

In 2025, India's top institutes offered only 17,760 JEE seats for more than 1.47 million candidates. One seat for every 83 applicants. Many who miss out leave.

Vembu Walks the Talk

What gives Vembu's appeal its credibility is that he is not asking of others what he has avoided himself. After earning his PhD at Princeton and working in the United States, he returned, not to Bengaluru or Mumbai, but to a village in rural Tamil Nadu. He runs Zoho, one of the world's most successful bootstrapped software companies, from Tenkasi.

"The talent is already there. We just have to nurture it."- Sridhar Vembu, on building Zoho's rural workforce in Tenkasi

Zoho competes directly with Salesforce and Microsoft across CRM, analytics, and workplace tools, without a single rupee of outside capital. Vembu's point, demonstrated rather than stated, is that world-class software does not require a Silicon Valley postcode.

India is Building, but the Gaps Remain Real

India's domestic tech ecosystem has strengthened considerably. The country is now the world's third-largest startup ecosystem, with 122 unicorns as of late 2025. The tech sector contributed 7.3% of GDP in FY2024. India's public cloud services market is projected to reach $25.5 billion by 2028, growing at 24.3% annually.

Government policy is moving to match. The "Brain Gain Bharat" initiative promises competitive salaries, startup grants, and relocation support for returning NRIs. Tamil Nadu has committed Rs 100 crore to new research centres in collaboration with IISc and TIFR, plus a "Tamil Talents Plan" offering globally competitive pay and co-supervised PhDs. The central government's Bharat-TALENT framework attempts to unify what have historically been fragmented, underfunded schemes.

The challenges are real. Scientists who return to India often face slow systems, unclear support, limited freedom in research, and outdated processes. Special benefits for returnees can also create tension with existing staff. While salaries are improving, they are still much lower than what engineers earn in the United States.

Open letter to Indians in America.
--
Dear brothers and sisters from Bharat:

Like I did 37 years ago, you arrived in America with no money but with a good education and cultural heritage from Bharat. You achieved outstanding success. America was good to us. For that we must…

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) April 27, 2026

The Harder Truth

Vembu’s point is simple. India has enough talent to compete globally, but a large part of it leaves the country. Indians are doing well abroad, but that success is also linked to the idea of a rising India—not just individual achievement.

He also makes a bigger point. Real global respect comes from a country’s own technological strength, not from its people succeeding in another nation, especially one that is becoming harder to live and work in.

The real question is whether India is ready to welcome this talent back at scale—with the right opportunities, systems, and support. Otherwise, returning may still feel like a risk.

Vembu, however, has already made that move. His life in Tenkasi shows that it can be done.