How Can India Avoid Brain Drain in Entrepreneurship Silicon Valley in the US which can be called the Mecca of the startup world depends majorly on foreign talent and a big part of them being Indian

For years now, Indians have looked at countries like US or UK for better educational and professional opportunities. Students often want to pursue their higher education abroad and even take loans to get there. This is followed by the pursuit of the best job which can help them recover the loan and then, later in the years land them the green card in the US.

This has resulted in some of India's best talent settling abroad working for the tech giants of the world. This phenomenon is often referred to as the brain drain. But there's a slow change that's being noticed.

Silicon Valley in the US which can be called the Mecca of the startup world depends majorly on foreign talent and a big part of them being Indian. However, with a boost in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India, many Indians are coming back to start up in their own country and look at solving the grassroot problems that we face.

Entrepreneur India spoke to entrepreneurs about how can we really avoid brain drain in entrepreneurship and ensure that Make in India truly reigns.

A Change At the Policy Level

There is an urgent need to make strategic investments in fostering an entrepreneurial climate in the country, believes Vinay Kalantri, Founder and Managing Director of tmw (The Mobile Wallet). Kalantri believes that the policy-makers need to formulate pro-entrepreneurial policies to position India as a global entrepreneurial hub.

"Single window clearance mechanisms are the need of the hour and concerted efforts should be taken to remove red tape and unwarranted bureaucracy to expedite business proposals. The government should set up dedicated entrepreneur grievance redressal cells to address the concerns and problems of the business fraternity and steps should be taken to resolve issues at the earliest," he said.

Educate Students

For India to breed entrepreneurial talent, it's important to educate its students. Entrepreneurship needs to be an essential part of the curriculum for students for them to understand and take a step in the right direction. Amit Kachroo, Managing Partner AANEEV wealth said that one of the steps taken by the government is that under PM scholarship scheme top 500 students of India would be getting the scholarship of Rs. 75000 and for engineering students; the professors of the IITs are providing the counselling and providing the reviews to the students accordingly. "Most of the new colleges are opening as fast as possible. So as a results students would get most of the opportunities in future and there would be no real need for them to emigrate themselves in another country to find the right opportunities," said Kachroo.

Build a Start-up Friendly Ecosystem

With the Modi government, India has already been taking steps to boost its entrepreneurial ecosystem. Rahul Agarwal, Director Wealth Discovery/EZ Wealth believes that Flagship Government of India Program's such as Startup India and the simultaneous easing of the FDI norms in FDI funding are steps in the right direction. "The intended goal of this initiative is to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large-scale employment opportunities. The GOI plan of action is focused on the following three pillars - Simplification and Handholding, Funding Support and Incentives and Industry-Academia Partnership and Incubation," he said.

Agarwal also pointed out The 2017 FDI policy circular which has a separate section on startups and spells out provisions that allow them to raise foreign money from venture capital funds and other investors through instruments such as convertible notes. "An enabling policy framework and easy access to risk capital are two main ingredients for startups to thrive and seemingly the efforts of the Government are focused on just that," he said.

Allow Entrepreneurs to Take Risks

Kalantri believes that entrepreneurs who constantly innovate, leverage technologies to challenge existing business models and expand markets for creating broader customer interfaces should be encouraged expand their business activities through a risk and reward system. "The bigger the risk, the greater would be the reward," he said.

Talking about risks, Yash Jejani, COO, Almora.io added that economic, educational, regulatory and business frameworks were all pressing roadblocks earlier. However, with recent developments in the blockchain space, we might be repeating the same mistakes again, believes Jejani. "To "undo' such brain drain now and to avoid it in the future, Indian policies and regulations not only should embrace new technological revolutions, rather, foster and develop them across all levels- institutional, business and regulatory. Maybe, this is the right time for liberalisation 2.0 by introducing more flexibility in policymaking," said Jejani.