‘India feels more vibrant than US’: NRI woman on Green Card queue says choosing Bengaluru over San Francisco was the right decision
38-year-old Astha Chaturvedi, a startup founder, moved to Bengaluru along with her family, including a kid and a pet, leaving behind San Francisco and now she feels she did the right thing. In an interview with Business Insider, Chaturvedi said the decision to return to India was made all of a sudden when she traveled to India in 2024 to hire a CTO for her startup. She and her husband had been living in the US for 15 years — they had a property and they were what people call ‘settled’ in the US.Chaturvedi said when she traveled to India for her startup, she experienced the startup culture in Bengaluru and that made her think whether she should open her office in India. “We’d spent about 15 years building our lives in the US, but there was still no clear path to permanence. My husband and I were both waiting for green cards, and the backlog felt endless. His place in line dated back to 2015, while mine was from 2020,” she said.Chaturvedi was on an H-1B visa but she changed it into an H-4 visa as she wanted to launch her own company.Before shifting to India, she was apprehensive about the work culture in India but gradually she realized that she will have it under her control as the boss. She described how they moved from San Francisco to Bengaluru between February and April this year and now own a $1 million apartment in Bengaluru.“It’s tricky to compare the cost of living. India isn’t cheap if you want a premium lifestyle. In fact, quality goods like furniture and electronics can be more expensive than in the US. But healthcare and household help are much cheaper, so I’ve found that it balances out. Bengaluru is a costly city, but that’s because we budget for a top-end lifestyle,” Chaturvedi described.“Traffic in Bengaluru is a pain, so we’ve chosen to hire a full-time driver to get around. What I don’t miss are chores. Bottom line: We’ve made up for the chaos by investing in support systems,” she said.Chaturvedi said as her daughter settled into her new school, their pet started adjusting to India, and they think they made the right choice by moving back to India. “Culturally, I don’t feel a gap at all. India feels more vibrant than the US,” she said.
