IIT cohorts across decades
Tell a different story about migration.
Ai is an inflection point in the graph.
2025-26 is the 75th year of the iit ecosystem. We now have enough data to conclude that migrating out was clearly a better choice than staying back. “Brain drain was better than brain in the drain” even from a national perspective.
The decision to migrate was never about talent quality. It was about where compounding opportunities existed. Let me analyze these over my 35 year working career.
In 1990, India lacked product ecosystems, capital depth, and research infrastructure. Migration was economically rational.
In 2000, liberalisation enabled scale through services, but learning and equity still concentrated abroad.
By 2010, India became a viable market with growing optionality.
By 2020, geography largely decoupled from opportunity. Global work, capital, and platforms became accessible from India.
Seen this way, “brain drain” is a misleading frame. What actually shifted over time was Institutional maturity, capital availability and ability to offer ownership and leverage
As these improved, the need to migrate declined. The opportunity may actually have increased though opening the door for next level migrants.
Channeling top talent into low-leverage roles carries increasing opportunity cost. The focus must shift from jobs to compounding pathways. In the AI and platform era, talent will naturally gravitate to environments—physical or virtual—that maximise learning, ownership, and impact.
Can we evolve fast enough to keep compounding local, even when opportunity is global?
It was never brain drain.
It was compounding drain.
An IIT graduate in 1990 migrated because India had no place for talent to compound.
In 2000, migration meant learning abroad and executing at home.
By 2010, optionality appeared.
By 2020, migration became a choice—not a necessity.
The uncomfortable truth:
👉 India didn’t lose talent for decades.
It exported ownership, equity, and decision-making.
Silicon Valley didn’t win because of visas.
It won because it allowed compounding.
Some of our institutions still behave like it’s 2000—optimising placements into MNC cost centres while the frontier has moved to platforms, AI, and global-first companies built from India.
In the AI era, that’s not conservative.
It’s value-destructive.
The real question isn’t why Indians migrate.
It’s why our institutions still train them as if they must.
At the same time, we must appreciate some facts. First and foremost is the reality that less than 2% of all Indians are suited for western style entrepreneurship. The figure is much higher in developed countries (maybe 10%) because they don’t come from a scarcity mindset. Second is the reality of a corrupt banking system and a failed legal system. Third is shear impact of crowding. We have three times the population density of China and a tenth of the income required for reasonable quality of life.
