Indian tech entrepreneur Nagendra Dhanakeerthi has recently relocated to California on an O-1A visa which is reserved for “extraordinary” people in their fields. His relocation comes amid the Donald Trump administration’s stricter rules for foreign nationals and a brewing discontent among the US tech workers over the H-1B visa, the program that allows US companies to hire foreign skills. But Nagendra is an O-1A and he recounted his last hurdle before getting the visa to the Wall Street Journal as being asked why he thinks he is extraordinary. The question is the visa’s core requirement that the applicants have to be extraordinary in their field. “I was confident but at the same time you do hear a lot of rejections,” Dhanakeerthi said. The Wall Street Journal report that detailed the the journey of the Indian techie from Bengaluru to California focuses on immigration in California and how it is necessary for California’s growth. The reply that Nag gave that got him his extraordinary category visa was his ingenuity. “I shared how I’ve led teams across geographies and how the product I built got acquired by AI Squared,” he said.Dhanakeerthi was described as one of California’s newest residents, whom his company paid a lot of money to get there. The Indian entrepreneur shifted to California from Bengaluru with his wife Sindhuja Ravichandran and their two daughters, as he found it difficult to work remotely. He was a co-founder of the AI startup and is now the chief technical officer after his company was acquired by a different venture.The WSJ report said that his company applied for a visa to relocate the CTO to California and the six-month process cost the company about $30,000. Darren Kimura, the CEO of the company AI Squared said he has a second visa applicant in India who is still navigating the O-1A application process. Kimura told WSJ that the second position is for chief customer officer, and it is a little difficult to define.
