India is on a hiring binge that Trump's tariffs can't stop

An abundance of motivated young professionals is luring American businesses to base their global operations in Indian cities

- Alex Travelli and Hari Kumar from Bangalore

In India’s most advanced cities, American companies are racing to set up more and bigger offshore campuses: fully staffed offices with high-skilled Indian professionals, performing functions vital to global business.

The concentration is most stark in bits of Bangalore. Apul Nahata of RapidAI, a Silicon Valley based medical technology company that uses artificial intelligence to interpret brain scans, can look out the window of the office he leads in India and see a “density of companies” relevant to his work.

“If I walk a half-kilometre, I see Google, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Visa, Samsung and Amazon right here,” said Mr Nahata, who spent 10 years of his career in California. He is especially tuned in to his neighbours in tech, but JPMorgan Chase has the biggest of these offices, with 55,000 workers spread across Bangalore and four other Indian cities. Even all-American retailers like Target and Lowe’s have centres employing 4,000 to 5,000 Indians in Bangalore.

Under President Donald Trump, the United States is upending some of its most important trading partnerships. He is particularly irritated by the $46 billion US deficit in the trade of goods with India. Trump has also complained about undocumented Indian workers.

But Trump’s stated policy solutions — higher US tariffs meant to force India to lower its trade barriers, and the deportation of immigrants — will do nothing to slow the evolution of the long partnership that binds together American companies looking for skilled workers overseas and India’s abundant pool of labour.