100% of Engineering Talent for AI leaving India

AI is very different from software engineering. Most of the startups are led by founders who have no clue of AI, and lead the teams thinking they’re ‘leaders’ and can get work done. Any problem statement in AI isn’t straight forward, is very ambiguous ambiguous, requires a lot of depth, research thought, resources (data, GPU infrastructure etc) but most founders don’t understand such things and put unnecessary pressure on teams to just deliver everything fast and cheap. Engineers get frustrated eventually and leave for US, where the research is cutting edge. There are a few good startups where founders have expertise in AI, but very few. HyperVerge, IDfy, Qure.ai, Rephrase, being few of them. But eventually, people still leave for better research prospects and job opportunities after MS in US. P.S. ML Engineer with over 3 years of experience, have worked with 4 startups.

Indian AI research jobs just aren't there. And the extremely rare ones that do exist pay a small fraction of what these people can get outside India.

AI? For any field, most people prefer working abroad if given a chance. Family commitments and pay are only levers

Indian jobs just don’t pay enough

Talented people will not work in India or Indian companies. This has been happening since 1960. Indian companies may be 1% are worth it. The rest are just lala shops of various degree