Indians account for a third of immigrant-led start-ups in US: Report

Business units set up by Indian-Americans continue to be a critical component of the US economy even as immigrant-founded start-ups are facing a decline in the country, a latest report has said.

The Indian-origin people, known for their entrepreneurial skills, stand ahead of others by owning 33.2 per cent of the engineering and technology companies founded by immigrants during the period 2006-12.

“Of the total of immigrant-founded companies between 2006 and 2012, 33.2 per cent had Indian founders, up about seven per cent from 2005,” said the ‘America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Then and Now’ report.

Indians have founded more such companies than immigrants born in the next top seven countries combined, says the 32-page report released by the Kauffman Foundation, showing that the proportion of immigrant-founded companies nationwide has slipped from 25.3 per cent to 24.3 per cent since 2005.

The drop is even more pronounced in Silicon Valley, where the percentage of these start-ups declined from 52.4 per cent to 43.9 per cent, it said.

According to the report, the top 10 countries which sent immigrant entrepreneurs during this period were India (33.2 per cent), China (8.1 per cent), the UK (6.3 per cent), Canada (4.2 per cent), Germany (3.9 per cent), Israel (3.5 per cent), Russia (2.4 per cent), Korea (2.2 per cent), Australia (2 per cent), and the Netherlands (2.0 per cent).

Indians tend to dominate the immigrant-founding groups of the top six States with the greatest representation of immigrant founders.

The States with the highest concentration of such companies were California (31 per cent), Massachusetts (nine per cent), Texas (six per cent), Florida (six per cent), New York (five per cent) and New Jersey (five per cent).

Of the Indian-founded companies, 26 per cent were founded in California and eight per cent in Massachusetts.

Similarly of the Chinese-founded companies, 40 per cent were founded in California and 16 per cent in Maryland.

While immigrant groups tended to concentrate mostly in California, German immigrants demonstrated a preference for starting businesses in Ohio (22 per cent), followed by California (17 per cent).

Authored by Vivek Wadhwa, Anna Lee Saxenian and F. Daniel Siciliano, the report says Indians account for the greatest number of immigrant founders across California, Massachusetts, Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey.