'I Was Living The American Dream': Shaadi.com Founder Anupam Mittal Gave Up His Green Card & Invested In Indian Companies

Entrepreneur and Shark Tank India judge Anupam Mittal has said Indians should stop treating a life in the United States as the measure of success. In a post reflecting on his decision to surrender his US Green Card, he said that story is 'finally breaking' and that he thinks this is 'a very good thing'. His comments come days after the US government suspended eight IT companies from the PERM labour certification programme, which is the first step in the employment-based Green Card process.

US suspends eight firms from PERM

On Thursday, the US Department of Labor said it would stop accepting new applications and processing pending cases under the Permanent Labor Certification programme (PERM) for eight companies. Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the move, according to Gulf News. The companies are TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Cognizant, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe. US officials cited alleged visa-related fraud and concerns about protecting American jobs and wages, according to Brut. No duration for the suspension has been announced.

The suspension is not a blanket ban on Indian companies or workers. It does not automatically cost H-1B holders their visas. Indian employees of the named firms with pending or planned PERM filings could face delays or blocked Green Card routes while it remains in force.

From a Green Card to a return to India

Mittal wrote that he, like many ambitious Indian children, dreamt of life in America, and that he got there. He said he had a good education, a job and more money than he had imagined. Within four years, he said, he was a multimillionaire living the American dream, and receiving his Green Card made him ecstatic, though the feeling did not last.

In 2004 he returned to India to build businesses, he wrote, but kept flying back to the US every year to keep his status. He said he went to the consulate in Mumbai to surrender the card, where an officer warned him that he might never get it back. He walked out with the card still in his pocket. A year later, he went back and handed it over. He said he left feeling lighter than he had in years, and that for the first time 'both my feet were on the same side'.

The road not taken

Mittal wrote that he sometimes wonders what would have happened had he stayed. In his telling, he would probably have been a wealthy vice-president at a US tech company, eating at an Indian restaurant once a week and worrying that AI would take his job. He said that path would have meant not building his companies, not backing more than 300 Indian startups, and not sitting on Shark Tank India watching new founders 'dream bigger' than his generation did.

A call to build from India

Mittal said this experience shapes how he views the current H-1B and Green Card turmoil in America. For decades, he argued, success for Indians meant a life in the US. He said the time has come to build global technology and brand companies from India. He closed with a line that 'sometimes a closing door is what makes you realize where home is'.

Published on: Monday, October 12, 2026, 01:36 PM IST