Can India be next Y Combinator destination?

Please name some successful startups that came out of India. Acquisition data would be nice!

Now it is possible that there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. But, imho, it is not enough to state baldly that there is significant entrepreneurial and IT activity happening here. IT as in "outsourcing" or "India Development Centres" sure. But the level of talent or software startups available is nowhere near what Silicon Valley offers. The few startups I have seen here in Bangalore are all a bit flaky. Examples :- Guruji.com claims to do "India Specific Search" better than Google. Their search engine is terrible . Minglebox attempts to create an Orkut clone (there was a scandal recently about some incestous connections between the VC and a founder of the company and suspicions about the objectivity of the deal and so on).

The only half decent software startup I know in India is Zoho and it remains to be seen if they can avoid being crushed by the Google Office juggernaut.

Now as to talent. Name 10 Indians who have significantly contributed to Open Source software and are based in India. Any significant languages, frameworks etc that came out of India?

I am not saying there aren't extremely bright people or developers in India . Given the size of the population it is impossible not to have bright people . But there does seem to be a distinct lack of entrepreneurial ability and the people who do seem to be very good developers don't want to take the risks of running their own company. Which is what Google Sacca was talking about. The people who do want to run their own companies are not correlated with high levels of programming skill, who prefer to emigrate to the USA.

Having worked 10 years in Bangalore, I assert that YC will find hypothetical Indian operations massively unsuccessful. This may change in the future. But for now, YC should focus on the US.

And before anyone accuses me of "racism "or something , I am Indian. I just try not to be blinkered.

"If YCombinator helped with Visas"

Yeow I hope not! INS's visa rules are a legal and procedural snake pit, with plenty of people abusing and bending the rules to get a chance to come to the USA. IMHO YC should keep to doing what it knows best . It is bad situation but not YC's problem to solve.

I would imagine that YC has (a LOT) more work than it can handle. Why would YC want to add to it by expanding to India (or anywhere else. If India why not China? If China ... )

i asked the same question to google's chris sacca -- i was wondering what could be done to have a Y combinator sort of a thing in India. he shared a similar opinion to what ur saying, in india the entrepreneurial culture is a little missing + in addition he thought indians were very good at backend stuff and not necessary in aesthetics. it might be debatable you don't need the whole of indian IT engineers god in aesthetics to support y combinator - i was in silicon valley , and currently in UK. but u do see a difference in culture but yet i can tell u there are lot of people who do cool stuff here, in america people the impression i get the english is the only language people worry about here u are dealing with french, germans, italians, spanish and they are very different, no wonder u find clones of US starts ups in europe adapted for european markets.

Thats true to certain extent Jey, but not entirely. Lots of Indians are coming out with exciting ideas everyday, but we don't have a person like PG here who could give right advice at the right time and this causes more startups to tank :-).

Thanks for the comment.

A lot, lot further than it would in the US. Your average Indian worker probably earns somewhere between $75 - $150 USD per month.

Exactly what I was thinking...

Do you mean the question about YC in your town?

If so, not quite. Moving to a different town to start a startup is just a test of commitment. Moving to a different country, though, dilutes the test with a bunch of bureaucratic stuff.

What I wrote is what I meant .. :-) You are right Subhash unfortunately there's is no PG equivalent in India , and thats the point. Angel funding is not an issue, what PG advices is what that matters most.

Sabeer Bhatia - founder of hotmail?

I bet you could get creative enough with the law to allow foreigners to work without a proper visa.

I am not a lawyer but I imagine if the team can get a tourist visa for three months, their new company was incorporated off-shore, in Ireland or the British Virgin Islands, and paid them in their home countries in advance for three months work that they could live in the Bay Area and participate fully with the added bonus of lower corporate taxes.

Or everyone could go to jail.