By Er. Rajesh Pathak
Much speculated days of an H-1B visa crackdown to backfire have come around, if the current trends are any indication. Around 70–75% of H-1B visas go to India out of what is sought world over, notably. In the changed situation now, the US companies too have braced up to opt for newer paths, knowing no end to Trump’s erratic behavior. Google is all set to invest $15 billion in Visakhapatnam for the world’s second biggest proposed AI hub after the US. This would require 1.00 lakh jobs.
So are Microsoft and Amazon, which are all set to invest $17.50 billion and $35 billion respectively, in turn projected to be generating lakhs of jobs in India within the next 2–3 years. When OpenAI is going to open its first office in India in Delhi, Apple, Meta, Netflix and Google are also going to launch their campuses in Hyderabad and Bangalore.
Likewise, much against what Trump would have wished while resorting to a hike in tariffs, the country’s export scenario is no less encouraging. The recent report tells that the total electronics export in 2025, for the first time, touched the worth of the ₹4.15 lakh crore mark, two-thirds of which notably came from smartphones, obviously due to the PLI scheme in the sector. Now India has emerged to have become the second biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, the credit for which also goes to the promotion given to the manufacturing of semiconductors in the country itself in a big way under the ambitious ‘Semicon Mission’.
So also, what setback we suffered on the US front in pharmacy has got to have been compensated by increased exports to Brazil and Nigeria. Amid uncertainty, these two countries have come up as prominent export destinations for drugs. If taken a look in the context of world over, the overall trading scenario is no less notable. Exports from India to Spain increased by 181.2%; to China, 90.00%; to Hong Kong, 35.5%; and to the UAE, 13.2%. This happened because the loss incurred from the US is compensated by the market forces itself through managing new outlets.
Whatever the US benefitted in the last few decades, a great chunk of it came from Indian talent, said Elon Musk a few days back. Now his own electric vehicle manufacturing company, Tesla, is reported to have increased the purchase of auto components from India despite higher tariffs imposed on it. In 2025, it purchased auto components worth ₹40,907 crore, which is double as compared to the previous year’s acquisition. Musk is said to be not wanting Chinese accessories in the cars being manufactured in the US by the company.
What Musk viewed about Indian talent is further attested by what the global professional services firm Deloitte has in its approach to increase its workforce. According to its South Asian CEO, Romal Shetty, the company’s goal for the next three years is as high as to have every third Indian as its employee. At present, it has around 1.4 lakh employees in India.
