Shashi Shekhar

Dear Lokesh Nara For years, India has battled brain drain—watching our brightest minds leave for Silicon Valley, never to return. Despite bold initiatives like Startup India and Make in India, the gravitational pull of U.S. tech salaries and infrastructure has remained strong. But now, with President Trump’s new $100,000/year fee on H-1B visas, the tide may be turning. This policy could: - Discourage mass hiring of Indian talent abroad - Make U.S. companies more selective, reducing outflow - Encourage return migration and domestic innovation Andhra Pradesh stands at a unique crossroads. With your renewed focus on Amaravati and Vizag as twin engines of growth, this is a golden moment to position them as global tech and innovation hubs. Imagine: - Vizag as the next AI and deep tech and startup capital - Amaravati as a magnet for returning entrepreneurs and researchers - A talent ecosystem that rivals Bengaluru, but with coastal charm and world-class infrastructure The world is shifting. Let’s make sure our best minds don’t just stay in India—but choose Andhra Pradesh as their launchpad. #BrainGain #Amaravati #Vizag #AndhraPradesh #LokeshNara #H1B #TechIndia #Innovation #TrumpPolicy #FutureOfWork

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With currently 70% of H-1B visas going to Indian talent, the future of U.S. tech could be fundamentally reshaped💡 The U.S. has introduced a $100,000 annual fee for new H-1B visas The impact on tech: •Startups will struggle to access global talent, slowing growth and increasing costs. •Only the top roles get international hires, driving intense competition for talent locally. •More top talent from India stay home, boosting the strength of tech hubs like Bangalore and Hyderabad. •Canada, Europe, and Asia could attract tech talent to the the U.S. The talent war isn’t ending — it’s moving. 👉 What do you think: a short-term protection for U.S. jobs, or a long-term risk for innovation?

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Human level intelligence (AI) researchers need a dose of ancient Indian wisdom on intellect. I keep hearing debates on how we’ll reach human-level intelligence. Panels, podcasts, research talks… you name it. One of them featured the brilliant researcher Elaya Sutskever, who went deep into how human intelligence differs from what today’s LLMs give us. And every time I hear these discussions, I feel everyone’s missing a rather large elephant in the room. A very old, very Indian elephant. Our Rishis ( ancient Indian sages and researchers) already mapped this territory thousands of years ago. 𝗜𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘀. 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲. 𝗜𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗶𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀. Sixteen. Most of us can barely manage two on a Monday morning. Because sixteen is a lot for the human head (mine refuses after four), the tradition simplifies them into four broader categories:  • Manas  • Buddhi  • Ahankar  • Chitta If you grew up in India, you don’t even need definitions for Buddhi, Ahankar and Chitta. We’ve all used these words, usually during IPL matches or family arguments. Manas is the only one we quietly Google. Here’s the funny part. Almost all AI research today focuses on just one of these: Buddhi. Pure reasoning. Great for exams. Not great for building something that resembles holistic intelligence. And then we sit around wondering why AGI still looks like that relative who says “I’ll come by 6” and shows up at 10. With snacks. If ancient thinkers identified sixteen aspects of intellect, and we are barely scratching one… well, the math doesn’t look promising. It’s like trying to recreate a full South Indian thali with only sambar. You can try, but good luck explaining it to the waiter. My take? If we ever want machines to truly match human intelligence, we can’t keep polishing just Buddhi. We’ll have to tackle all aspects — yes, all sixteen — no matter how inconvenient that number is for modern PowerPoint slides. Until then, AGI will remain like my gym membership: theoretically possible, practically distant, and occasionally mocked. What do you think — are we overestimating Buddhi and underestimating the rest?

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$100K H-1B visa fee: A challenge or an opportunity for India? With the recent order imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, many predict tough times for Indian tech talent in the US. But here’s another way to see it — this could accelerate a shift we were already witnessing: global companies investing more in India. We already have a strong talent pipeline and competitive salaries. The next step is clear — we need to create the right environment and culture to innovate. That means: - Expanding beyond metros into Tier-2 cities. - Building ecosystems where engineers don’t just deliver, but invent. - Solving infrastructure and workplace challenges that hold back creativity. - Taking the best from Western corporate culture (clarity, meritocracy, ownership) and blending it with India’s sense of belonging, community, and “individual first → team first” mindset. This is not just about support work moving here. It’s about India stepping into a leadership role in global innovation. I truly believe — this century belongs to India. 💡 What do you think — is this policy a setback, or a catalyst for India to lead? 🔗 Source: https://lnkd.in/d6DFUQut #H1B #TechInIndia #Innovation #Bharat

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A father and son just published a paper that quietly dismantles much of what Silicon Valley is promising about autonomous AI agents. Vishal Sikka is not some random academic. He was the CEO of Infosys, former CTO of SAP, the architect behind SAP HANA, and currently sits on the board of Oracle. His son, Varin Sikka, is currently conducting AI research at Stanford. Together, they published a paper that no AI marketing department wants widely read. Their core argument is mathematical, not philosophical. Large Language Models can only perform a fixed amount of computation per response, dictated by their architecture. If a task requires more computation than that ceiling allows, the model cannot reliably complete it. It must either guess, approximate, or make something up (hallucinate.) This is not a limitation of training data or model scale, its a hard computational bound. They illustrate this using the Traveling Salesman Problem. Ask an AI agent to verify whether a proposed route is truly the shortest among all possibilities, and the verification step alone requires exponential computation. The model physically cannot perform that verification and importantly no amount of prompting, agent chaining, or reasoning tokens fixes this issue. This exposes an uncomfortable reality, that nearly every impressive AI agent demo you have seen is carefully constructed to stay under this complexity ceiling. Meanwhile, the real world problems enterprises want automated, such as logistics planning, scheduling, operations optimization, verification, financial modeling, and operational control, routinely blow it or worse hide that the blew straight past it. Now this DOES NOT means AI is useless, even if development froze today, AI would still transform how we work and provide incremental value to its user in numerous ways. But it does raise an interesting question, if OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini are truly months away from AGI, why are so many of their senior researchers and platform architects leaving to start their own companies? If you are on the brink of the greatest technological breakthrough in human history, why trade that position for equity in a risky startup? The answer is clear, they've seen a clear and observable ceiling, and now they're positioning accordingly. The paper is essentially a thesis for why “LLM-only” will commoditize and fail in high-stakes workflows, and why compound, verifiable, data-native systems win. Whats the answer? Is there a solution? data² differentiation is that our reView platform externalizes heavy lifting into: clean workflows that are anchored in graph traversal / retrieval, deterministic recall, constrained reasoning steps, and targeted external tool calls. We don’t ask the model to do the impossible, we orchestrate systems that can enable the possible across your existing systems and solutions. That is where the technology and your existing IT investments create value and competitive differentiation!

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🚨 USCIS Policy Update USCIS has officially updated its Policy Manual with stricter rules on immigration benefit requests. From now on, officers will consider anti-American activity, support for terrorist or antisemitic groups, or antisemitic ideologies as overwhelmingly negative factors when reviewing applications. 🔹 Immigration benefits (like living and working in the U.S.) are considered a privilege, not a right. 🔹 Social media vetting is also being expanded to check for anti-American activity. 🔹 This new guidance applies immediately to pending and future requests, including EB-5 investor petitions. 👉 Bottom line: Anyone applying for U.S. immigration benefits must show compliance with laws, positive intent, and no ties to anti-American or extremist ideologies. 📌 Source: https://lnkd.in/dJMeKykw ✉️ To know more about visa updates and the new USCIS policy guidance, contact us today — our experts will guide you through the process and answer your questions. 🌐 Visit us: www.bedgetechinc.com 📲 DM “OPT2GC” for personalized career guidance 💬 Chat with us: +1 (646) 523-7184 🤝 Connect with our expert Pankhil Patel: +1 (307) 776-9532 #USCIS #ImmigrationNews #ImmigrationUpdate #USImmigration #ImmigrationPolicy #VisaUpdates #StudyInUSA #WorkInUSA #USVisa #ImmigrationLaw #InternationalStudents #OPT #STEMOPT #H1B #EB5

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🚨 Trump’s $100K H1B Visa Fee – Who Wins, Who Loses? The recent announcement that H1B visa fees will now be set at $100,000 per year is making waves across the tech and business world. On the surface, the assumption is simple: by drastically increasing the cost of hiring foreign workers, companies will be forced to hire American talent at home. But anyone who has studied global labor dynamics knows this isn’t how businesses think. 💡 If I were an American business owner, facing skyrocketing costs and competitive pressure, I wouldn’t suddenly start paying double or triple for domestic talent just because of a new policy. Instead, I would double down on offshore operations. Here’s why: 👉 Global Capability Centers (GCCs) will rise – Rather than relying on H1B visas, companies will accelerate the setup of GCCs in tech hubs abroad. Cities in India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Eastern Europe could see a surge in demand as U.S. companies look for cost-effective, reliable offshore partners. 👉 The outsourced tech services market benefits – Far from losing business, offshore IT and BPO providers may be the unexpected winners. This fee hike could redirect billions of dollars toward outsourcing rather than U.S. hiring. 👉 Talent migration patterns shift – For decades, many skilled engineers and developers from India and Pakistan saw the H1B visa as their pathway to the American Dream: higher wages, global exposure, and a chance at permanent residency. That door is now significantly narrower. The very people who once aspired to move to the U.S. may now find better opportunities closer to home as U.S. companies bring work overseas instead of importing workers. 👉 America risks a long-term brain drain – In the short term, it might look like a win for “protecting U.S. jobs.” But in the long run, this move may undermine America’s biggest strength: its ability to attract the best global talent. Silicon Valley was built on immigrant innovation. Making it prohibitively expensive for foreign workers to enter could backfire, reducing America’s competitiveness in the global tech race. 🌍 Winners & Losers in this new reality: Winners → Offshore service providers, tech hubs in South Asia, and GCC operators. Losers → Aspiring H1B workers, families hoping to migrate, and potentially the U.S. innovation economy itself. This is why I see the policy not as a blow to outsourcing, but as a catalyst for its acceleration. For tech entrepreneurs in Pakistan and India, this is an opportunity to position themselves as trusted partners, ready to absorb the demand that U.S. firms will inevitably push overseas. The global talent pool hasn’t shrunk. It has simply shifted location. And in the process, the balance of opportunity may tilt eastward. The real question isn’t whether American companies will adapt this. Video from Global News. #H1B #GlobalTalent #Outsourcing #TechPolicy #GCC #Innovation #FutureOfWork #darshanamanikkuwadura Darshana Manikkuwadura (Dash) 🇬🇧 🇱🇰

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President Trump has signed an executive order imposing a $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visas, dramatically reshaping U.S. immigration and labor policy. Since 70% of H-1B visa holders are Indians, the impact will be disproportionately felt by Indian professionals and companies with U.S. operations. The administration argues the move protects American workers and raises the cost of hiring foreign talent, ensuring only the “best and brightest” qualify. However, the implications are far-reaching. U.S. employers — especially in technology, consulting, and research — will see labor costs surge. For large corporations the fee may be manageable, but startups and mid-sized firms could be priced out of access to specialized global talent, pushing them to offshore projects instead. Indian workers already in the U.S. face uncertainty, while those abroad may be unable to enter unless employers can justify costs or secure exemptions. The policy risks slowing innovation, weakening America’s competitive edge, and straining U.S.–India talent pipelines. Critics question whether the executive branch can legally impose such a steep fee without Congressional approval. Lawsuits are expected. For now, the order signals a more protectionist stance and could redirect global skilled migration toward countries like Canada, the UK, and Australia.

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Embracing Discomfort: 8 Career Lessons from Google CEO Sundar Pichai 1. Be your own toughest critic – Self-awareness and honest feedback fuel growth. 2. Seek out people who intimidate you – Learn from those who challenge your capabilities. 3. Lean into discomfort – Stretching yourself often reveals strengths you didn’t know you had. 4. Let passion guide your decisions – Following what excites you leads to more fulfillment. 5. Build mission-oriented teams – Success stems from shared purpose and collective drive. 6. Trust before you criticize – A foundation of trust empowers collaboration and resilience. 7. Let recognition come naturally – Focus on impact, and acknowledgment will follow. 8. Remember: wealth is only part of the story – Purpose, growth, and impact matter too . It’s a powerful reminder that real growth starts at the edge of comfort & underscores the importance of humility and reflective leadership, even at scale.

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OpenAI’s $500 billion Stargate project aims to make the U.S. a global AI leader by building advanced data centers and creating 100,000 jobs. Partnering with Crusoe Energy for clean power, and tech giants like Microsoft and Oracle

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If Trump Raises H-1B Costs, Will Tech’s Center of Gravity Tilt Away from the U.S.? For decades, Silicon Valley has been the undisputed hub for global technology talent. The H-1B visa program, despite its flaws, enabled a steady inflow of skilled professionals—especially from India and China—who built products, led innovation, and kept the U.S. ahead in the global digital race. But if the Trump administration significantly hikes H-1B visa fees, the cost calculus changes. What was once an incentive for the brightest minds to flock to the U.S. may now push them—and their employers—to explore Europe, India, and China as alternative bases of growth. 🔹 Shift in Strategic Choices: Global tech firms may accelerate investments in India’s growing innovation clusters (Bangalore, Hyderabad), Europe’s AI and semiconductor corridors, or China’s advanced manufacturing ecosystems, reducing dependency on U.S. labor markets. 🔹 Client & Contract Risks: U.S. firms serving Fortune 500 clients may face project delays, cost overruns, or even contract migration if talent pipelines dry up. Europe and Asia could seize this as an opportunity to pitch themselves as cost-efficient, stable destinations. 🔹 Innovation Geography: The “brain circulation” effect could deepen. Instead of a one-way stream to America, talent may prefer to stay closer to home, fueling startup ecosystems in Asia and Europe, while U.S. firms grapple with talent shortages. 🔹 Policy Irony: A measure designed to “protect” American jobs could end up weakening U.S. competitiveness, pushing both capital and creativity offshore. The world’s next big breakthroughs may then be stamped with “Made in India,” “Designed in Berlin,” or “Engineered in Shanghai.” The global tech industry thrives on openness, talent mobility, and collaborative ecosystems. Restrictive visa policies may not just be a U.S. immigration issue—they could become a global competitiveness issue. What do you think? Will higher H-1B costs shift the balance of tech innovation away from the U.S., or will firms absorb the pain and continue to rely on American soil as their primary base? #H1B #TechPolicy #GlobalTalent #Innovation #India #China #Europe #FutureOfWork #techindustry

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