More NRI in US turn investors

Indian immigrants in the US are making a strong mark for themselves with an ever increasing number turning into inventors in the country, a recent study says. According to a report prepared by a team of researchers from Harvard, Duke and New York Universities, the number of Indian nationals contributing to the US international patent applications touched 5.5 per cent in 2006. This is a sharp rise compared to just 1.6 per cent in 1998.
"During this period, there was a large influx of highly educated Indians into the US and they contributed immensely to the intellectual capital of American corporations and universities," Mr Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at the Harvard Law School and executive-in-residence at Duke University, one of the authors of the report said. Analysing the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications from the US at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the researchers found contribution of inventors with Indian-heritage names increased to 13.7 per cent from 9.5 per cent during 1998-2006.
Besides, Indian and Chinese inventors file most patents in the fields of sanitation, medical preparations, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and electronics. Geographically, most of the Indian inventors chose to reside in places like California, New Jersey and Texas. "Indian-born entrepreneurs in the US founded more engineering and technology firms than the next immigrant groups from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan, combined," the report says.