Returnee Entrepreneurs and Tech Startups in India: Distinctive Features, Innovativeness and Outcomes

Returnee entrepreneurship is gaining traction globally. Returnee entrepreneurs tend to possess significant knowledge capital, international social capital, financial capital, managerial, and entrepreneurial skills, among others, relative to domestic entrepreneurs. Therefore, they can contribute to bridging the knowledge gap, technology gap, skill gap, and entrepreneurship gap that may exist between home and host economies. As a result, they can more effectively contribute to the acceleration of economic growth and transformation of emerging economies like India and China. However, evidence of the role of returnee entrepreneurs in the Indian innovation ecosystem is very limited and fragmented. Therefore, this book is the first attempt to explore and understand comprehensively the distinctive characteristics of returnee entrepreneurs, the level of innovativeness and market focus of their products and services, and their ability to launch, sustain and scale up tech startups (relative to domestic entrepreneurs) based on primary data in the context of startup capital of India, Bengaluru.