Aastha Chaturvedi, 38, a startup founder, left San Francisco for Bengaluru with her family, including a child and a pet, and now feels she did the right thing. In an interview with Business Insider, Chaturvedi said that the decision to return to India was taken suddenly when she came to India in 2024 to hire the CTO for her startup. She and her husband had been living in the US for 15 years – they owned a property and people called them ‘settled’ in the US.Chaturvedi said that when he traveled to India for his startup, he experienced the startup culture in Bengaluru and it made him wonder if he should open his office in India. “We spent nearly 15 years building our lives in the US, but there was still no clear path to permanency. My husband and I were both waiting for a green card, and the backlog seemed endless. His place in line was from 2015, while mine was from 2020,” she said.Chaturvedi was on an H-1B visa but changed it to an H-4 visa as she wanted to start her own company.Before relocating to India, she was apprehensive about the work culture in India but gradually she realized that it would be under her control as the boss. He told how he moved from San Francisco to Bengaluru between February and April this year and now has a $1 million apartment in Bengaluru.“It’s difficult to compare the cost of living. India is not cheap if you want a premium lifestyle. In fact, quality goods like furniture and electronics can be more expensive than in the US. But health care and domestic help is very affordable, so I’ve found that’s balanced out. Bengaluru is an expensive city, but that’s because we budget for a top-tier lifestyle,” Chaturvedi explains.“The traffic in Bengaluru is excruciating, so we opted to hire a full-time driver to get around. What I don’t miss are the tasks. The main thing: we compensated for the chaos by investing in support systems,” she said.Chaturvedi said that as her daughter settled into her new school, her pets began to adjust to India, and she feels they made the right choice by moving back to India. “Culturally, I don’t feel any shortage at all. India feels more alive than America,” he said.