For Pranesh Anthapur, a globe-trotting career has come full circle. More than a decade ago, Anthapur left his native India for a job in northern California with the software company Verifone. Last year, he moved out of his “rather lavish” five-bedroom creek-side house in Silicon Valley to return to India as chief operating officer of Yahoo’s research and development centre in Bangalore. The R&D centre, with its warren of cubicles filled with balloons, bean bags and playful knick-knacks in Yahoo’s signature purple, is the company’s largest outside California, with 1,000 employees.

Anthapur has accumulated a wealth of anecdotes during his global journey. A favourite is the Verifone human-resources assistant puzzling over the three Indian software engineers due to arrive in California who wanted to live together. “They’re all men!” the assistant said. Anthapur pointed out that they might have wanted to share a house for practical reasons. “Probably one of them knew how to drive,” he said.