Being an Indian I can tell you the reason behind this. our education system unfortunately fails to promote innovation. even then there are a few startups like zoho and slideshare which are doing well.

Another thing which goes against Indian is their shyness. In west people get ideas patented left right center. On the contrary Indian people never go that far. Some of the people never get started because of fear of becoming a laughing stock on failure. Again root of this thinking lies in our 200 years old education. Startups are all about uncertainty ; our education system always teaches us to take the safest option.

"As a computer science student in IIT Mumbai puts it if programming requires a post graduate level of knowledge of complex algorithms and programming methods..."

That's such a load of crap... (And I say that as another CS alumni from IIT Mumbai itself!)

It seems to me that it's more like a network effect than a lack of education. Why are there few startups in Europe?

I read (can't find link) from an outsourcer that Indian programmers don't want stock options, presumably because they have not experienced successes like Google.

I've met a skilled Indian programmer, in Colorado. He was doing consulting, and living most of the time in the US. I assumed that he was not alone in doing this.

"Most software professionals in India are not programmers, they are mere coders". The same can be said of the US.

Heh, this is a perfect example of why languages matter. All these people are employed churning out reams of boilerplate Java.

I wonder if a kind of natural selection is present here. Wouldn't the only old programmers left be the ones who didn't get fired, or got sick of the industry? In other words, would only the good, "for the love of it" programmers remain?

Zoho is an indian startup

Doesn't really say anything about startups...

There are a bunch, although not shinny as you white guys