‘There was no conspiracy to boost Indians’: Sridhar Vembu explains how US won R&D by accident

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu says Indian tech companies fail to innovate — not because of a lack of money, but because they don’t know how to stick with people. In a post on X, he pointed out a surprising reason behind the rise of Indians in US technology: visa rules that enforced long-term loyalty and, as a result, led to better R&D results.

“There’s a point about R&D that I make over and over again,” Fembo wrote. “R&D is not expensive but time consuming and the best results are achieved by teams that remain committed for the long term.”

According to Vembu, US tech giants have inadvertently cracked this code through the H1-B visa and green card backlog — systems that have made it dangerous for immigrant workers, especially Indians, to switch jobs. This forced commitment has given companies stable teams and better innovation.

“Since companies tend to promote committed people, Indians got a promotion,” he wrote. “There was no conspiracy to promote Indians, it was a consequence of the visa/green card system.”

His claim is supported by numerous studies: the most productive R&D environments are built on long-term team stability. Companies that retain engineers through multi-year projects consistently outperform companies with a high attrition rate and shifting goals.

Vembu says Indian technology companies have not understood this. They suffer from disruption, prioritize short-term contracts, and often lack systems to reward multi-year persistence – eliminating any serious chance of a breakthrough in innovation.

“Technology companies in India need to realize the importance of this,” he said. “It’s about creating a culture of long-term focus on research and development.”

Analysts agree. Without structural incentives to survive – or a culture that values ​​deep, patient engineering work – Indian companies remain stuck implementing other people’s ideas, not building their own.