There are many Indian restaurants in Silicon Valley serving the best Indian food in San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is home to a great number of Indians in California. Most of the Silicon Valley companies including Google keep their Indian employees happy about food according to their desi taste buds, which is often a concern with many living or going abroad.

Among the Silicon Valley companies in San Francisco, Google at Mountain View deserves a special mention for providing free food to its employees. Google Headquarters houses 30 different eating joints to pamper its employees with delicious food from various cuisines. The global search engine giant has got an Indian restaurant Baadal to provide its Indian American and Indian employees with authentic Indian food for free at its Mountain View campus in Santa Clara County.

Café Baadal at Googleplex is Indian to the core from its décor to menu. With glittering lanterns hanging from the ceiling and flamboyant cushions on cozy chairs, this Indian restaurant at Google headquarters has captured the colors of India in its interior. With eye-catching posters of popular Bollywood films from the golden eras of Indian Cinema adoring the walls, Baadal has truly nostalgic ambiance, which makes Google’s Indian American employees feel a connect with India.

The maps and flags of India not only dominate the interior décor but also add to the nostalgic quotient of Café Baadal at Googleplex in Mountain View.

The menu at Café Baadal has some of the best and most popular Indian dishes, including chicken biryani, which is a favorite of many Google employees in the Mountain View campus. Masala chai is their favorite pastime too. The restaurant changes the menu every day but chicken biryani and masala chai are available all time. The menu serving authentic Indian food from north Indian dishes to south Indian thalis makes dining a desi affair at this Google restaurant in Santa Clara County.

Baadal Rice is the mainstay of the menu at Café Baadal. It is a special mix of Sona Masoori rice, brown rice and Bhutanese red rice. There is a special meal named Brahmin for some employees who prefer Sattvik food.

Be an employee Indian or Indian American, a meal or thali is incomplete without desserts for them. Unsurprisingly, Café Baadal at Googleplex serves sinful Indian desserts. The restaurant has become so popular that even Google employees need to book tables in advance. There is a small food truck outside Café Baadal at Googleplex for those having no reservation. The employees without advance booking and those on the go can grab some of the dishes from the truck instead of making a beeline.

The story of Indian food at Googleplex does not here. There is a smaller van beside the food truck, which serves desserts outside the restaurant.

Chef Irfan Dama, who is popular as Chef Dama in San Francisco Bay Area, cooks Indian food for the Google employees in Mountain View. He specializes in Indian cuisine and cooking. It is his culinary magic that has made the Indian restaurant Baadal at Google Headquarters a hit with employees.

Baadal is one of the best restaurants for Indian food in Silicon Valley. Each bite reminds you of your mother, home and country. The Indian street style masala tea is my favorite at Baadal. – An Indian employee at Googleplex.

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Instituted and sponsored by Ernst & Young, a multinational conglomerate, the Entrepreneur of the Year Award recognizes entrepreneurs in such areas as innovation, excellence, financial performance and business leadership from more than 140 cities across 60 countries. Ernst & Young is up with a list of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 finalists in California, including four Indian Americans who demonstrate entrepreneurial excellence and outstanding business acumen.

Eric Basu: Founder of Sentek Global in San Diego

The finalists for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 Award include Eric Basu, the founder and CEO of Sentek Global Consulting in San Diego. A graduate in molecular biology from San Jose State University, Eric Basu is a seasoned entrepreneur and leader in information technology, with strong understanding of military operations and security. His company Sentek Global leads government programs and commercial IT operations. He is also a board member of the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence.

Prior to wearing the entrepreneurial hat, Eric Basu was a Navy Special Warfare (SEAL) officer in the US Naval Reserve. He played various roles in several organizations including KPMG and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), and founded Global Entertainment Security, a nationwide security service firm, which he sold in 2006.

Manish Chandra: Founder of Poshmark App in Redwood City

One of the Indian Americans among EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 finalists in California, Manish Chandra is the CEO of Poshmark which he launched in 2011. Poshmark is an app-based fashion marketplace where users can catch up with like-minded fashion freaks and pick trends from the latter’s style-books or collections. Users can also use Poshmark app to sell what they don’t wear anymore.

Manish Chandra, an IIT graduate from India, is currently a Redwood City based entrepreneur in California. He did masters in computer science at the University of Texas in Austin and MBA in marketing & finance at U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business. He worked in a few reputed companies before hitting the tracks of entrepreneurship.

Jyoti Bansal: Founder of AppDynamics in San Francisco 

Among the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalists in 2016, AppDynamics’ founder Jyoti Bansal is one of the successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs from India. His India to USA journey with an H1B visa is an inspirational story of ‘American Dream’. An IIT Delhi graduate, Jyoti Bansal had to wait 7 years to fulfill his entrepreneurial dreams until he got an employment authorization document (EAD) as part of the green card process.

Jyoti worked with a few startups in Silicon Valley before he launched AppDynamics, an IT operations analytics company, in 2008 in San Francisco. Currently, he is the executive chairman and chief strategist of AppDynamics whose employee strength is 900 and value is estimated at $1.9 billion.

Vivek Ravisankar: CEO of HackerRank in Palo Alto 

Among the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 finalists in California, Vivek Ravisankar is a cofounder and CEO of HackerRank. A computer science graduate from the National Institute of Technology in India, Vivek had lost out on a high-paying job offer during campus placement, which proved to be a blessing in disguise. A minor error in the final round of the interview made him discover the potential entrepreneur in him, and he founded Interviewstreet.com in Bangalore to help job seekers with mock interview sessions online.

He had also had a short stint as software development engineer at Amazon in Chennai. He realized his American Dream in 2012 with the launch of HackerRank in Palo Alto. HackerRank helps companies source the best talent in programming and evaluates competency of programmers based on their coding skills. Today Vivek Ravisankar’s clientele includes such prestigious names as Facebook, Amazon, Walmart, Bing and White House.

The EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2016 winners among the finalists from San Diego, Los Angeles and Northern California will be announced on June 20, June 21 and June 24 respectively. The National Entrepreneur of the Year Award will be selected out of regional winners from across the United States.

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Hopes of working in the US on H1B visas and studying in the US universities on F-1 visas will be dashed if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz among the US presidential nominees rises to power in the White House. If the fulcrum of the presidential election in the United States tilts in favor of either Trump or Cruz, the bill to put a cap on the H-1B visa scheme for foreign workers and remove the Optional Practical Training (OPT) authorization for foreign students on completion of graduation or post graduation has chances to become a law.

Unlike the previous years when several bills to restrict work visas including H1B policy were introduced in the White House, but nothing came to fruition, this year the proposals by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are supported by Jeff Sessions of Alabama where the Senate Immigration Subcommittee is instituted. Jeff Sessions of Alabama proposed ‘The American Jobs First Act of 2015’ in December 2015. He is the first US Senator to support Donald Trump for the next US President.

Adding to the row over the supposed misuse of H-1B visa scheme by American employers is laying off of two employees at World Disney and their replacement by foreign workers on H1B visa in the recent past. Those two expelled workers from Disney World participated in the rally organized by Donald Trump in Madison, Alabama, last Sunday and criticized the H1B visa policy.

Introduced by Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz, the bill ‘American Jobs First Act of 2015’ for US employers seeks to restrict hiring of foreign professionals and end approval of OPT for foreign students by imposing tough conditions on both H1B and F1 visas. The main purpose is to prevent displacement of American workers by ‘cheap labor’ from foreign countries including India, China, Philippines and South Korea.

That the American workers are being forced to train their foreign counterparts before displacement by the latter is unacceptable. The Congress is required to reform the system that many Indian American and native America employers frequently abuse to save on investment by importing cheap foreign labor, according to a statement in the proposed bill.

The proposed bill ‘American Jobs First Act of 2015’ requires employers to hire foreign workers with only master degrees or higher qualification from those universities or institutes which match academic standards in the US. The US employers are also required to levy no penalty on their H1B workers for leaving jobs before the end of contracts with the companies.

The bill also seeks to restrict issuance of employment authorization document (EAD) to those foreign students on F1 visa whose fulltime study programs in the US are over until any such document is expressly authorized under the OPT (Optional Practical Training) program or any other similar / equivalent program.

The ‘American Jobs First Act of 2015’ requires US employers to maintain and update an online database of H1B applications in real time ensuring absolute transparency. Besides complete elimination of the OPT program, which entitles foreign students to having work permit in the US, is demanded in the bill.

If the bill becomes a law, US employers will have to pay H-1B employees what American workers used to get paid for the similar or same work two years before recruitment of foreign workers on H1B visa, or a minimum salary of $110,000. Moreover, the bill seeks to introduce a ‘cool-off’ period of two years of 730 days for US employers in a bid to prevent them from hiring H1B workers during the same period of a strike by or termination of their Native American workers.

However, “How much do foreign students contribute to the US economy” is not taken into consideration by those looking to ban the Optional Program Training and restrict F1 visa issuance to foreign students. 340,000 jobs were created and supported by foreign students and their families, which contributed $26.8 billion to the US economy in the 2013-2014 academic year, according to NAFSA’s report for the same period.

Every 7 foreign students support 3 jobs in the US by spending on tuition fees, dining, accommodation, transportation, health insurance, telecommunication and retail. An amount of $4.42 billion was contributed to the US economy by foreign students’ dependents including spouses and children in the US during the 2013-2014 period.

According to a report on international students in the US by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) under the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 1.5 million foreign students were studying in the US in 2015. Nearly 1, 50,000, which is equivalent to 10% of the total 1.5 million foreign students were from India. If 1.5 million foreign students’ contribution to the US economy in the 2015-2016 academic year is roughly estimated at $30 billion, 1,50,000 Indian students on F1 visa contributed $3 billion to the US economy during the same period.

The proposed ban of the Optional Practical Training program (OPT) will result in a decline in the number of foreign students. Evidently, they would not like to invest thousands of dollars in 2-year or 4-year degree courses if they are denied employment or opportunities for job experience in the US on completion of studies. The majority of foreign students are non-STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students who will largely be affected simply because a fresh graduate or postgraduate in arts or humanities or social science is unlikely to get a minimum salary of $110,000 from US employers as it is proposed in the bill.

It would rather drive Indian, Chinese and Korean students to other countries with better employment prospects like Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, except a handful of those who plan to earn a degree in certain fields of technology and business management in the US.

The current scenario of hiring in the US is not so positive because of a tremendous hike of fees for certain categories of H1B and L1 visas, according to Bill Coleman, CEO of Veritas Technologies. A media interview quoted him saying that Silicon Valley companies are grappling with a small number of professionals due to a lid on hiring of foreign workers following the H1B and L1 visa fee hike. This scenario is in stark contrast to the purpose of the proposed ‘American Jobs First Act of 2015’ that is to benefit Native American workers.

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A tremendous hike of fees for certain categories of the US H1B and L1 visas in December 2015 has delivered a blow to not only Indian IT firms but also top IT companies in the Silicon Valley, California. It is evident from a media interview which quotes Bill Coleman, CEO of Veritas Technologies:

We can’t hire enough good people. They are just not available here. The salaries here are going through the roof, because everybody is competing to hire from everybody else.

He is not the sole voice to call for “dramatic expansion” of the H1B visa policy. Most of the Silicon Valley companies in California demand a “dramatic expansion” of the H-1B visa scheme to facilitate hiring of qualified professionals from India, China and other countries. “Silicon Valley companies are grappling with a small number of professionals due to a lid on hiring foreign nationals following a high cap on H1B and L1 visas,” said Bill Coleman in his interview with PTI.

Bill Coleman, who has been associated with some of the top IT companies in the US for 40 years, recently joined Veritas Technologies as its CEO. He co-founded BEA Systems and headed Sun Microsystems’ software development units. He has designated the post of director at Symantec Corporation since 2003. Veritas Technologies has its major Indian base in Pune City with 1700 employee strength. Coleman said in the interview that some of the facilities might be shifted to India from USA.

An additional fee of up to $4,000 for certain categories of H1B visa in a bid to revive the US economy and reduce the native employment rate has resulted in a worrying shortage of quality professionals for the Silicon Valley companies. Even Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft among the top IT companies in USA are facing the shortage of right professionals, thereby increasing salaries beyond measure to hire from other IT firms.

Bill Coleman cited an instance of how grim the hiring scenario is in the Silicon Valley from his conversation with Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Alphabet (the parent company of Google) that Alphabet managed to hire a data scientist for a managerial position but ended up paying a $10 million sign-on bonus. He referred to it as a ‘crazy’ incident.

Coleman opined that the number of H1B visas to be issued should be in sync with the pressing need to hire quality professionals from outside of the United States. He added that expansion of the H-1B visa scheme should be a priority for the Silicon Valley companies. However, he admitted at the same time that nothing much could happen about it until and right after the presidential election in the US.

In his interview, he referred to India as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and said that India is where long-term opportunities are available for the Silicon Valley companies. He credited it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in India saying “It is not that difficult to do business in India” because the scenario is improving in the BJP regime.

In support and praise of Indian Americans, Bill Coleman said that they hold senior positions at two-thirds of the Silicon Valley companies in California and that they can become leaders of top IT companies in their lifetime.

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India is rising in the Silicon Valley of California. Yes, this is what “India Rising @ Silicon Valley” says. Recently released by the Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the book is an anthology of success stories of Indian American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, USA. The book chronicles their milestones in different sectors of technology and gives insights on their significant contribution to the growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.

High-profile Indian-American executives of tech conglomerates like Google and Microsoft have already become role models for many young ambitious individuals. “India Rising @ Silicon Valley” is full of inspiration for those looking to make it big in their lives. It not only depicts the arduous journey of Indian American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley but also maps their road to success.

Among the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs featured in the book are Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella from Hyderabad, Google CEO Sundar Pichai from Chennai, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen from Hyderabad, SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, India Community Center cofounder Talat Hasan, and many others. Some of the entrepreneurs and executives who are the heroes of “India Rising @ Silicon Valley” are philanthropists too.

Evidently, the book is a good read about the philanthropic practices by them. Many Indian American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley give back to India in various ways. The book carries personal anecdotes of how they find the joy of giving back through philanthropy. For instance, the American India Foundation honored Sanjay Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO of SanDisk, for his philanthropic efforts to provide underprivileged young people with educational opportunities, in March 2015.

Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), says, “The book is a micro picture of macro achievements by Indian American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. I am sure that it will inspire budding entrepreneurs and career enthusiasts in India to make their dreams come true and fulfill their aspirations in technology.”

A study by Professor Vivek Wadhwa in 2014 states that majority of tech-company funders are Indians among immigrants in the US. Indian American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have founded more startups than any other community of immigrants. An excerpt from “India Rising @ Silicon Valley” reads, “In a knowledge-based global economy, both India and Silicon Valley will continue to inspire and learn from each other. The way Silicon Valley’s Indian American entrepreneurs engage with India will amaze the world.”

Some of the Indian American entrepreneurs, executives and philanthropists, who the book is dedicated to, are:

• Shantanu Narayen, President & CEO, Adobe
  Nikesh Arora, President and COO, Softbank Corp.
  Vinita Gupta, Co-founder, Digital Link Corp.
  Vinod Khosla, Co-founder, Sun Microsystems
  Sanjay Mehrotra, Co-founder and CEO, SanDisk
  Prabhu Goel, Founder, Foundation for Excellence
  Talat Hasan, Co-founder, India Community Center
  Lata Krishnan, Chairman, America India Foundation
  Kumar Malavalli, Co-Founder, Brocade Communications
• Romesh Wadhwani, CEO, Symphony Technology Group
  Suhas Patil, Founder, Cirrus Logic
  Vivek Randiive, Founder Tibco
  Premal Shah, President, Kiva.org

We at Indian Eagle celebrate the success of Indian American entrepreneurs, executives and philanthropists. We connect them with India by booking their air travel from USA to India.

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