Transformer by Mint | To H-1B or not to be?

You don’t need to look very far to see how and why. Pichai helms Google, arguably the world’s most influential internet company today. Nadella runs Microsoft, the $3.8-trillion global behemoth that powers most computers around the world. Aravind Krishna helms IBM, and Shantanu Narayen chairs Adobe. Earlier this year, Kevan Parekh took Apple’s second seat alongside chief Tim Cook. Even before them all, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo blazed a trail for prolific Indian corporates to lead US giants.

Just over a week ago, Trump seemingly torpedoed this very same trail that has seen the US retain its superpower status—and build out Big Tech into the world-controlling juggernaut that it is today. The six companies mentioned above, all helmed in various ways by benefactors of the H-1B visa in the US, are collectively worth over $11 trillion today. If they were a country, just these six companies would become the third-largest economy in the world—behind only China and the US itself.

Given its impact, you won’t be penalized for wondering why the US would want to sever ties with the very same workforce that has foundationally catapulted them to where they are today.

Take Ashish Vaswani, for instance—the man who basically invented generative AI as we know it today. When I met him this June, Vaswani told me that he’s still on an H-1B visa, even though it will soon be two decades in the US for him.

For generations, the H-1B has been a route to aspirations of prosperity for millions of Indians—especially those from small towns. India’s IT services firms have retained talent by migrating them to the US as a key perk of the job. Even doctors have pursued The American Dream.

Through all of the past week, Devina Sengupta, one of Mint’s finest, led our coverage of the H-1B debacle—where Trump’s new policy marked up the cost of the visa by up to 100x. The biggest stories for you to read, are here:

• Devina’s explainer breaking down why foreign companies coming to India to set-up in-house tech development and research operations would face the music;
• Jessica Jani and Devina also wrote on why the H-1B strictures would affect physicians in the US, potentially leading to a shortage of skilled doctors in the medium term.
• Our tech services correspondent Jas Bardia, along with veteran journalist Varun Sood, wrote about why smaller tech services firms seem less concerned about the H-1B visa plight, than the top five.
• Legal correspondent Krishna teamed up with Devina to describe the H-1B job pursuants’ crisis via legal experts at the moment: sketching out how firms are looking to deal with the hefty fee, and what this means for the people seeking jobs.
• Mint’s resident data journalists Nandita Venkatesan and Manjul Paul also detailed how the US is the latest salvo to the struggles of Indians who have pursued studies or even their career so far, prepping for a move abroad.

I leave you with these five pieces, which offer an excellent grasp on the impact that it can have on tech jobs in particular—which have largely seen the US and India maintain cordial but stable relationships. If this changes, can either nation retain their core strengths in technology? Only time will tell.

Hunting cyber crime mules

This Thursday, I teamed up with my colleagues Shayan Ghosh and Manas Pimpalkhare to go behind efforts to redo India’s tech regulations around online financial frauds—known better as ‘digital arrests’.

Regulators and industry stakeholders who were privy to the developments said that a team of 38 members of parliament, part of the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, met over the past months to agree on one thing, among others—way too many people are losing way too much money, and just raising awareness won’t cut it.

The solution: a collaboration of multiple ministries and bodies are likely to work together, along with banks, to trace accounts that are used to spread stolen money across the country in minutes. One such case that I am tracking actively for Mint has a net sum of over ₹5.5 crore, that was spread across 161 bank accounts mostly within a day.

This is a rising problem, one that is making it incredibly difficult for cyber sleuths to recover money lost by unsuspecting citizens. The solution will use government IDs to track opened accounts, and freeze them as required.

Read our full story to understand how this new initiative can help you—or otherwise.

Upgrading India’s air defence tech

Last week, I also reported on a deal that the publicly-listed Paras Defence expects to sign—as part of an emergency procurement contract from the Indian Army. The said contract is for a nifty little defence system for drones.

This, though, is only one. Insiders that Mint spoke with said that there are multiple types—soft-kill or hard-kill—of drone defence systems. Each of them cater in varying degrees of defence against drone attacks of multiple levels, going all the way up to the most serious one at level five.

Over the coming weeks, Mint will report extensively on this space—especially around the rise of India’s first, multi-tiered, comprehensive aerial defence system against drones. For now, our full story is here.

Finally, wi-fi 7 in India

Mint’s telecom correspondent Jatin Grover broke the news this week that in the coming months, India is likely to open up access for companies to operate the wi-fi 7 wireless connectivity standard in the country.

To be sure, this is the latest standard of consumer-end wireless internet, and is available in the latest Apple iPhones as well as the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro. While the latter was not launched in India citing issues of compliance with the Centre’s wi-fi 7 standard, it seems that a solution to the plight is finally in sight.

Here’s what you need to know for when you can get a PS5 Pro in India, all thanks to wi-fi 7.

In other news: Mint reviews the new iPhone, relentless spam calls, and Carl Pei's return

Speaking of wi-fi 7, this week, I spent some time with Apple’s much-hyped iPhone 17 Pro Max. This, in many ways, is as extreme as smartphones can get—at its top-most spec, the iPhone 17 Pro Max can cost just over ₹2.5 lakh. But, it can also produce true cinematic shots—such as the iconic scene from The Matrix where Neo dodges bullets. That it is at the very top of the ladder as far as smartphone rankings are concerned is no surprise, but is it really for everyone? Here’s what I found.

Meanwhile, the burning question around rising scam and spam calls is endless. The Centre now wants to pitch in, contributing to a potential regulatory environment. But, questions have been raised around whether such regulations would even really help. Jatin wrote at length about the discussions, including inputs from the chairman of the top telecom regulator, Trai. Read on to know more.

Finally, Thursday saw Carl Pei, once beloved in India as the cofounder of OnePlus, come back to India by announcing that his company, Nothing’s sub-brand, CMF, is now an Indian company. The latter will now operate in a joint venture with homegrown electronics manufacturer Optiemus Infracom, which will hold 65% of the entity. In an interview with Mint, Optiemus’ chairman, Ashok Gupta, said that with Nothing and Corning—two recognizable names from the smartphone world—now being his clients and partners, the company will achieve four-digit profits within three years. The question, though, is—will CMF do well enough to capture a sizeable share of the Indian smartphone market? We leave you with this thought for this week.

Transformer by Mint is a weekly newsletter that brings India’s most important and interesting technology updates under one umbrella. As the world transforms with every day of innovation, Transformer will keep a tab on the impact that technologies will make in each of our lives. Published every week, the newsletter brings some of India’s tech landscape’s most insightful coverages until date.