Indian entrepreneurs dominate US tech start-ups space: study

High-tech start-ups founded by immigrants from India have grown phenomenally in US amid a decline in immigrant entrepreneurs considered a critical source of fuel for the US economy, according to "America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Then and Now", a Kauffman Foundation survey, published yesterday.

The study shows that 24.3 per cent of engineering and technology start-up companies in the US have at least one immigrant founder serving in a key position and in that, Indian-born entrepreneurs, representing 33 per cent of the companies, dominated the group.

Indians, in fact, founded more firms than immigrants born in the next nine immigrant-founder countries combined. After India, immigrant founders represented China (8.1 per cent), the United Kingdom (6.3 per cent), Canada (4.2 per cent), Germany (3.9 per cent), Israel (3.5 per cent), Russia (2.4 per cent), Korea (2.2 per cent), Australia (2.0 per cent) and the Netherlands (2.0 per cent).

However, the proportion of immigrant-founded companies in the US has slipped from 25.3 per cent to 24.3 per cent since 2005, according to the study.

 The drop is even more pronounced in Silicon Valley, where the percentage of immigrant-founded start-ups declined from 52.4 per cent to 43.9 per cent. The exceptions to this downward trend were immigrants from India, the study noted. Although founders in the study hailed from more than 60 countries, 33.2 per cent of them were Indian, up from about 7 per cent in 2005.

While immigrant entrepreneurship has stagnated, the rates of Indian and Chinese start-ups have increased, the survey found. In 2005, Indians and Chinese entrepreneurs accounted for 26.0 per cent and 6.9 per cent of immigrant-founded companies, respectively.

Immigrant-founded firms were most likely to be located in traditional immigration gateway states: California (31 per cent), Massachusetts (9 percent), Texas (6 per cent), Florida (6 per cent), New York (5 per cent) and New Jersey (5 per cent).

Indian founders tended to establish businesses in California, New Jersey and Massachusetts, and Chinese founders showed a propensity to start companies in California and Maryland.