Indian Americans arrived in waves to California’s Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Today the SF Chronicle reports, they are entrenched in the high tech industry and beginning to gain a foothold on California’s political scene as well.
The numbers tell the story. Research by both Stanford & U.C. Berkeley found Indian Americans have founded nearly 13 percent of the startups in Silicon Valley and 7 percent nationwide.
Yogi Chugh is a planning commissioner in the Bay Area city of Fremont.
“We can be tough entrepreneurs,” Chugh said, “maybe because we know what it’s like to come from a place where so many live on the edge.”
Angel investor Anil Godhwani put it another way. He says the second generation of Indian Americans “it has sunk in, this is home.”
Many point to Kamala Harris , California’s Attorney General and a rising star in the National Democratic Party(pictured in this story). Her mother is Indian born and her father Jamaican American. Rep. Ami Bera, another Democrat representing the Sacramento Valley upset a long time Republican in the November election to become just the third Indian American ever elected to Congress.
Now there’s speculation that Ro Khanna is preparing a challenge to Representative Mike Honda, a Japanese American and one of the most liberal members of Congress.
The SF Chronicle has a lot more on the growing population of Indian Americans in Silicon Valley, one of the largest concentrations in the United States.