R2I - Car, House and Internet

A Car to get around, nice place to stay and easy access to the web - I would rate these as some of the essentials to nail down once you R2I. And researching these before-hand is definitely useful. Some may argue about the importance I am giving to getting a vehicle and having an Internet connection in the context of R2I. The reason I do so is that these are things we have come to depend upon heavily while living in the states and take them for granted. Given the apprehensions we all have about the decision to R2I, getting these sorted out early enough reduces the emotional stress and gives you fewer reasons to crib about in the initial phase(and there will be quite a few reasons to complain in the first few months).

Housing - one decision here is to Buy or Rent. If you don't already own property then renting is a good option initially. If you are transferring to India with your Parent company, try to negotiate accommodation for a few months as part of your relocation package. After a few months, you will get a better feel of the city , the different neighborhoods and also an outlook on your long term plans. You can then decide to buy. Having your own place and doing it up the way you like makes you feel much more settled especially if you are in a new city like me. A few things about renting - Always try to negotiate on the deposit you pay, ask around about the landlord so that you can be somewhat certain that you will get your deposit back when you end your lease, clarify the terms on your lease if you need to break it. Another thing to explore is whether your company offers you CLA - Company Leased Accommodation. The advantage of this is that the security deposit and brokerage fee are paid by the company. The monthly rentals are subtracted from you pay. The disadvantage might be that the company may have a fixed set of houses/apartments to choose from. If you are not availing the CLA, you may be eligible for a tax deduction under the HRA (Housing Rent Allowance) component of your pay. Make sure you get monthly receipts for your rent and hold onto them until the end of the tax year.

Coming to buying a car - a city like Bangalore doesn't have very good public transport options. The metro project looks promising. The new A/C Volvo buses are very good but few in number ( they are introducing more and more every month). But the existing public buses are really bad. And auto rickshaws, although plenty, are out there to fleece you - my experience with auto rickshaws in Bangalore has been really bad. Hence my reliance on my car. Of course, you need to be comfortable driving in India. The earlier you get comfortable the better. There are some options of automatic transmission these days - Maruti WagonR, Hyundai Santro, Hyundai i10, Honda City. But the main thing is to decide what size car you want - small (3 to 6 Lakhs), mid-size (6 to 9 Lakhs) or large (9+ Lakhs). Once you have done that you can check out the options in that segment. Once again it worthwhile checking out if your company offers you a CLP - Car Lease Plan. Generally this is a loan that the company extends to you and reclaims from your salary on a monthly basis. And the rate may be higher than the market rate. But the advantage is that, the deductions from your salary for the CLP loan are pre-tax. Moreover , the program may also include an option to set aside pre-tax money for your monthly pay for fuel, car maintenance and driver salary. The tax savings more than make up for the rate of interest you are paying. And if you were not planning to take a loan , than the amount you would have paid outright for the car , can be put away in a fixed deposit to earn interest. Definitely worth looking into.

And finally, the Internet connection. My experience has been that getting a "Good" broadband connection may be very easy or very difficult depending on where you stay ( another criteria when selecting a place to stay). The two best options are Airtel and BSNL - I would rate airtel higher for their customer service which is very impressive. But some times Airtel will simply reject your request for a connection with the reason that they either don't have sufficient ports in your area or don't have connectivity altogether. BSNL on the other hand is available almost everywhere. The problem with BSNL is that it takes a couple of months to get a connection and the customer service isn't good. But if you can influence the lineman in your locality, you may be able to get the connection pretty fast. In case both options don't work out, the Tata Indicom WiMax connection is a good alternative. I have tried it for a short while until I could switch to Airtel - the speeds are good, customer service is good - the only negative is that I experienced more downtime than I would have liked.

R2I Planning : How much is enough for R2I ?

One of the most frequently debated topic on all R2I forums is "How much is enough?" to R2I. Opinions range from the utterly ridiculous to the extremely optimistic - And thats my opinion. So this blog entry is an attempt to document a fact rather than express an opinion. My wife and I have been tracking our expenses using Quicken. We have tracked ALL expenses - big and small - be it a lavish dinner or a short auto rickshaw ride in an attempt to capture the typical monthly expense range. And our range is between 30 to 40 thousand rupees a month. Below is the expense graph for the current month - its on the lower end of the range. But you can see the expense breakup under various categories we have identified.


In order to place the above information in better perspective, our profile is as follows:
Young couple - no kids
Both working
Own house and car (no EMI)
Regular moviegoers (once a week)
Regular restaurant diners (once or twice a week)
Social Drinkers ( Alcohol not a big expense)
Generally in good health
Not shopaholics

And we lead an upper middle class life in Bangalore. We don't hesitate to go out with friends for a drink or think twice before visiting an expensive restaurant. But given that we are both working, these are generally over the weekend. So the above numbers are pretty much the average for any month. The expense report does not include any travel or vacation obviously. It only includes what we consider regular monthly expenses. Since quite a few R2I'ers would fall under the above profile, thought this information would be useful. If you rent, add another 15 thousand rupees for Bangalore. EMI payments can really bloat your monthly budget - but if you plan your R2I such that your Home and Car are covered from your savings, the above numbers should serve as a good guide.

R2I planning

The planning required to return to India for good after having spent a substantial amount of time abroad is immense. If I got down to listing the various factors to be taken into consideration and then the variables that can occur in each of them....well I would never get done. But if I were to broadly classify areas that need to be sorted out before anything else, they would be - Job, Housing, Transport (depending on the city you are relocating to this may or may not be very important) and Internet connection - in decreasing order of priority. Others things like finances(bank accounts, 401k, credit cards), immigration paper-work, medical insurance, taxes etc , you can figure out once you are settled.

On the job front there wasnt any searching for me to do since I was transfering with my US company to their Bangalore office. They did a good job of taking care of all the logistics. Of course it is very important to get a fair idea of the market conditions and your market value. Expecting a package much better than a local candidate with similar years of experience , just because you have worked abroad, isn't realistic. However, there is definitely a dearth of talent that comes with complete product life-cycle experience, especially in niche areas. If are able to demonstrate that you can add value to a company not just as a programmer but as a knowledge bank for a product or service, make sure you cash in on that. As far as the work culture goes, I am yet to see a major difference in my organisation between the India office and the US office. How is the "Work Culture" in India ? is probably one of the most common questions folks in the US ask me. And even people here ask me if I am able to adjust to the "office Politics" in India. So I guess there might be some truth to the stories about very long hours, horrible bosses and politics to get ahead. But thankfully I havent been a victim of any of those so far.And I am sure there are as many instances of "Bad Bosses" and "Office Politics" in the US.Also there is a strong divide between product based companies and the software services companies in India. Service sector employees tend to work longer hours simply because they mainly work with clients in the US and the projects are generally short term projects. Whereas in Product companies the work has been consistently improving with groups in India gaining ownership of complete features and in some cases an enitire product line. In such cases the work and the environment at work become very similar to that in the US. However, this development is slow in many cases. You may have to endure a struggle of convincing the US teams to allow you to take ownership of more and more stuff. As a result of this, many "solid" engineers in India lack overall product exposure and hence exposure to the business. Hopefully, moving forward , with greater emphasis on customers and sales in this part of the world, this too will change.

My first post

Its been eight months since our homecoming. I had promised quite a few people that I would share my experience of returning to India after having lived in the United States for a fair amount of time – 9 years to be precise. It was suggested that I blog my thoughts. I was all excited about starting my blog but expectedly never got to doing it. By now, I have already shared my thoughts with close friends on the R2I (Return to India) experience as they call it. But nevertheless, thought I would finally get to blogging just in case it helps others. And also use this as a platform to share my thoughts on some of my interests – traveling and photography to be precise. Hopefully, there will be more posts to follow this first one!