Should I move to India ?

India has changed a lot in last couple of year and so people outside the country thinking its a good time to come back and settle down.

I moved to India recently and As per my experience and calculation , you should think 100times before you move back to India. Dont feel I am regretting or anything but calculations worked in favor of India for me... so You need to do your own calculations and planning.

Few thing you should consider :

Are you planning to move to India because of family ?
This will make sense if you want to take care of your parents and they can live with you. So see if that is feasible as lot of people I know are from near by place where there are no job opportunities and parents may not interested in moving to some metro.

My friends ?
If you are reading this blog , I am assuming you are away from you India since 4-5 yrs. In the fast running and busy life, thats a very big gap and good chances that you lost touch with lot of friends. But once you join any firm here , you will make some with time :)

Do you have a house in a big city where you planning to settle ?
Settling means having your own house, with all that reality boom , owning a house can be a dream. I know you will say what about recession prices. But my dear friend there is no such thing in the city like hyd and bangalore.. if you willing to drive 40 km in India to work then you have an option. Go to some online websites and checkout prices.

Also for those who do have a parent house , evaluate options if you will be able to manage in that house, as it may be old or too far from your work place , or may be too many families living in same house.

Check howz job market and big companies ?
This is same as #1 point, make sure you have options available for growth.

How about salary ?
I am sure all of you will be intrested in knowing about this. As I have worked both in India and USA , considering that average salary in US and India, rough guess on savings will be a dip upto 50% in case you are only one working , and can be a dip upto 70% if you and your spouse both were earning. This can be a big impact if you have some financial obligation in India.

How much India has changes ?
When we are away from country for sometime, then we just recall good times and forget all problems we use to have. In case you want to know if India has changed or not. I can give you some idea. WATER and ELECTRICITY cut is still part of life.. Once in a while you will find PEOPLE beating each other on roads as both of them were expert drivers.. TRAFFIC situation is not improved much...infact we have more UN EDUCATED drivers on the road. Shopping experience is better now.

Is there anything better ?
I know not everything is bad here. As I said you can be back with your family. Also if you are lucky you might be able to trace out your school and college friends ( no virtual meeting on orkut and facebook ). Also you can start your own dream business parallely. You can count on your kids in future :). What else :)

LifeStyle ?
Usually most of Desi's dont have any such thing anyway :) . Maintaining a second hand car and renting cheapest apartment in the locality is actually not called life style... but you can rent house at decent price anywhere in cities. If you owned a house in USA then I am sure you will be able to buy a house in India. Schools are good here, costly also. You have lot of places to shop , theaters and hang out places.

SHOULD I MOVE or NOT
If all is going well, career , money and stability wise +
your parents visit you often , then DONT MOVE back.

Visa Issues ?
In case you are facing VISA issues then you can parallely apply for other countries like AUS ,Singapore and Dubai.

Online money transfer USA to India

I have been to USA for sometime and one of the thing we all use is online money transfer service from USA account to Indian account for loan payments and other reasons.

I am writing here to share my experience with different service providers I used in pasted to do such remittances.

Exchange rate :
Everyone is the key factor which people take into considering on to move the money right away or wait a little bit, I am no different.

I usually check Exchange Rates to get an idea on current market rates. All the providers promise to transfer at ZERO fee but usually you will rates less than market rate by 20 paisa to 50 paisa. That's how they charge the fee.

So check the difference your provider have and find which one is providing you best rates.

Time it takes:
I am sure this is the biggest pain in this whole process. Time it takes from when you start the transaction from the point you have it in your account vary a lot from one provider to another.

In my past experience there are few sub factors which drives this in your favor or against.

Bank Deposit / Cash Pickup / Draft :
Usually Bank Deposit and Cash Pickup's are much faster then Drafts, which will take its own time to deliver ( consider how efficient courier services we have in india ).

Bank itself :
If you want to transfer to HDFC in india then use HDFC remittance service, same apply to SBI and ICICI remittance. Across bank usually adds upto 2-3 more days.

My Experience :
With my experience I am rating services I have used in past.

XOOM.com ( 4.5/5 ) - good exchange rates - fastest service with rates locked. One time they delivered in 23hrs.

ICICI - best rates - too slow - end to end average 8 days - no guarantee of exchange rates

HDFC - slow - good rates - end to end average 8 days - no guarantee of exchange rates

SBI - ok ok - end to end average 5 days - no guarantee of exchange rates

Remit2India - haven't tried , leave feedback if you have