From Workers to World Leaders

There was a time when the story of Indians going abroad was largely told through airports: a suitcase, a passport, a job offer and a family waving goodbye.

Today, that story looks very different.

An Indian abroad may be a software engineer in Silicon Valley, a doctor in London, an entrepreneur in Dubai, an academic in Australia, a construction worker in the Gulf—or the person sitting in the corner office of one of the world’s biggest technology companies.

India’s global presence is no longer simply about migration. It is about skills, businesses, money, ideas, culture and leadership moving across borders.

According to data from India’s Ministry of External Affairs, approximately 35.42 million overseas Indians were recorded as of May 2024, including about 15.85 million non-resident Indians and 19.57 million people of Indian origin. The community stretches across more than 200 countries and territories.

That number is large enough to create a small thought experiment: if the overseas Indian community were a country, it would be one of the world’s larger populations.

But numbers alone do not explain its significance.

From migration to leadership

One of the most visible changes has happened in corporate leadership.

Satya Nadella, originally from Hyderabad, is chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. He became CEO in 2014 after a long career inside the company and has been closely associated with Microsoft’s transformation around cloud computing and enterprise technology.

At Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai represents another highly visible example of an Indian-born technology executive reaching the top of a global technology company.

And at Adobe, Hyderabad-born Shantanu Narayen has led the company since becoming CEO in 2007 and later became chair of its board. Adobe credits his leadership with helping transform the company from a desktop-software business toward cloud-based products and digital experiences.

The interesting point is not simply that these executives are Indian-born.

It is that their careers demonstrate how Indian education, technical expertise and professional experience have become part of the leadership talent pool of global corporations.

And that is a much more interesting story than simply counting CEOs.

The millions whose names we don’t know

Corporate CEOs make headlines because their photographs appear in newspapers.

But they are only the most visible part of the Indian global workforce.

Millions of Indians work in healthcare, information technology, engineering, education, finance, construction, hospitality, transportation, manufacturing and other sectors.

The geography is equally diverse.

North America and Europe have attracted large numbers of professionals in technology, medicine, research and higher education. Australia has developed a significant Indian professional and student community. The Gulf has a particularly large Indian workforce across construction, engineering, healthcare, retail, hospitality and professional services.

The Ministry of External Affairs’ 2024 figures put the overseas Indian population at roughly 3.54 crore. The United States had the largest Indian-origin population in the MEA table, at about 5.4 million, followed by the UAE at about 3.6 million, Malaysia at about 2.9 million and Canada at about 2.9 million.

This diversity matters.

The Indian diaspora is not one profession, one class or one economic group.

It contains highly paid executives and entrepreneurs, but also workers whose labour supports construction projects, hotels, transport networks, factories and service industries.

Any serious account of India’s global workforce has to include both.

The money coming home

Perhaps the clearest economic measure of the diaspora’s importance is remittances.

In 2024, India remained the world’s largest recipient of remittances among low- and middle-income countries, with the World Bank estimating inflows of approximately $129 billion. Mexico followed at around $68 billion, while China, the Philippines and Pakistan were also among the largest recipients.

These are not just abstract financial flows.

For millions of families, remittances can help pay for education, healthcare, housing, household consumption and investment.

There is an important distinction here, however.

Remittances are not simply “free money” flowing into India. They represent the earnings of people working abroad, often after years of education, migration costs, family separation and personal sacrifice.

Behind every billion dollars is an enormous collection of individual stories.

A nurse working a night shift.

An engineer sending money home every month.

A restaurant worker supporting parents in India.

A professional paying for a sibling’s education.

A business owner investing in two countries at the same time.

The spreadsheet may call these transactions “remittances.”

Families call them life.

India is also buying the world

The relationship is not only about Indians moving abroad.

Indian companies have increasingly moved in the opposite direction—acquiring businesses, brands, technology and industrial capabilities overseas.

One of the most famous examples is Tata Motors’ acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover in 2008. Tata describes JLR as part of Tata Motors since 2008 and identifies it as Britain’s largest automotive manufacturer.

The Tata group’s international expansion has included acquisitions such as Tetley, Corus, Jaguar Land Rover, Daewoo Commercial Vehicles and businesses in Singapore, Thailand and the United States.

There is an amusing reversal here.

For generations, Indians travelled abroad to find opportunities.

Now Indian companies are sometimes travelling abroad to buy the opportunity.

Of course, acquisitions are not automatically successful. Owning an international brand does not guarantee profits, and managing businesses across different regulatory systems, labour markets and consumer cultures is difficult.

But the direction of travel is significant: Indian capital and Indian companies are increasingly participants in global business rather than merely observers of it.

And then comes culture

Economic influence is only one part of India’s global footprint.

Indian food is now familiar far beyond India. Yoga studios operate across continents. Diwali and Holi celebrations have become increasingly visible in international cities. Indian cinema, music, dance and fashion travel through both diaspora communities and mainstream global audiences.

The process is not entirely organised from New Delhi—or from Mumbai.

Much of it happens organically.

A family opens an Indian restaurant.

A university student organises a Diwali celebration.

A yoga instructor introduces a class to traditional practices.

A child born overseas learns a language spoken by grandparents thousands of kilometres away.

Culture travels because people carry it.

The uncomfortable side of the success story

A balanced story must also acknowledge the other side.

Migration can produce brain drain, family separation and difficult working conditions. Not every Indian professional abroad becomes a CEO, and not every overseas worker enjoys comfortable circumstances.

Some migrants face discrimination, exploitation, visa insecurity or pressure to maintain financial support for families back home.

There is also a temptation in public discussion to turn every successful person of Indian origin into evidence of India’s inevitable global rise.

That would be too simplistic.

An individual’s achievement belongs partly to the individual, partly to institutions that educated and employed them, and partly to the societies in which they built their careers.

India can rightly celebrate its global talent without pretending that every achievement abroad is proof that everything at home is working perfectly.

The real Indian advantage

The most interesting lesson may therefore be something deeper than the number of Indians abroad.

India has developed an unusually broad international human network.

It connects engineers with technology companies, doctors with hospitals, entrepreneurs with investors, students with universities, workers with infrastructure projects and families with financial systems spanning continents.

That network has economic value.

But it also creates something less easily measured: trust, familiarity and human connections between India and the rest of the world.

DOONITED Editorial Perspective

The Indian diaspora should neither be romanticised nor reduced to a remittance machine.

Its greatest strength is its diversity.

India has exported labour, but it has also exported expertise. It has sent students abroad, but some have become researchers and innovators. Indian workers have built physical infrastructure in foreign countries while Indian-origin executives have helped manage digital infrastructure used by billions.

The next challenge for India is not simply to celebrate people who succeed abroad.

It is to create conditions where talent can move by choice rather than necessity, while maintaining strong connections with those who choose global careers.

The smartest strategy is not “bring everyone back.”

It is make India strong enough that people can leave, return, collaborate, invest or stay abroad without ever having to leave India behind.

That may ultimately be the real meaning of an Indian global workforce.

Not a country losing its people.

A country whose people have built connections across the world—and continue to keep one foot, economically, culturally or emotionally, at home.