In a strategic move to navigate tightening U.S. immigration policies, Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, is set to ramp up its operations in India significantly. The expansion comes as the Trump administration imposes stringent restrictions on H-1B visas, a program heavily relied upon by tech giants to import skilled foreign talent, mainly from India and China. This has prompted companies like Alphabet to shift operations to the origin countries of the talent.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Alphabet has secured 2.4 million square feet of office space in Bengaluru’s Whitefield tech corridor, specifically at Alembic City. This includes leasing one office tower, which is slated to open to employees in the coming months, and purchasing options on two additional towers expected to be completed next year. As per an Alphabet spokesperson, the company has leased 650,000 square feet of office space.
Acquiring purchasing options means Alphabet will have exclusive right to purchase the properties after they are completed, but the company also retains the option to not purchase the properties.
If fully utilised, the new facilities could house up to 20,000 additional staff members, potentially more than doubling Alphabet’s current workforce in India, which stands at approximately 14,000 out of its global total of around 190,000 employees.
The push into India is the direct result of of the U.S. government’s overhaul of the H-1B visa program under President Donald Trump. Last year, the administration hiked application fees for new H-1B visas to $100,000, a dramatic increase from the previous range of $2,000 to $5,000. The move was aimed to prioritise American workers and curb what Trump has described as abuse of the system by foreign outsourcing firms.
Alphabet, one of the top sponsors of H-1B visas, has historically depended on the program to fill critical roles in engineering and AI development, with a significant portion of engineers hailing from India. These changes, combined with heightened scrutiny and potential taxes on outsourced work, are accelerating the relocation of high-skilled jobs to countries like India, where talent pools are abundant and costs are lower.
Alphabet’s acquisition of new office spaces in India comes just a year after the company opened its largest campus in Bengaluru, named Ananta. And it is not the only company to adopt this strategy to combat Trump’s visa restrictions. AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic PBC (maker of Claude) have recently opened their offices in India. Other tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Netflix etc are also rapidly expanding their operations in India.
The India strategy of Alphabet and other companies not only mitigates visa-related disruptions but also positions them to tap into the world’s most populous nation’s growing digital economy. Apart from being the largest pool of tech talent, India has a booming digital economy with over 1 billion million mobile device users with cheap internet services.
As per another Bloomberg article last month, the US is losing top tech talent to India as a result of Trump’s visa restrictions. It said that if the policies inspire Indian tech workers to leave US or not go to US at all, India will be the beneficiary. And that change is already happening. As per LinkedIn, number of tech professionals changing their location to India increased by 40% in the third quarter of 2025.
According to a joint report by the FICCI and ANAROCK, India is expected to host over 2,400 global capability centres (GCCs) by 2030, employing over 2.8 million professionals. This will go up from current level of 1,700 GCCs employing 1.9 million people.
