FIRMS in Asia will need a lot of talent to drive growth.

Executive search firm MRI Group said last year that companies in China will need 70,000 middle and senior managers over the next five years.

An estimated six million students will graduate in China and three million in India this year, but human resource experts say local graduates often lack the communication and practical business skills needed to get jobs.

Asian returnees say their Western exposure gives them the ability to deal with international customers.

'At the organisational level, companies in the tend to understand marketing, positioning and differentiation pretty well,' said Mr Vikram Narayan, an Indian returnee who started his own firm Ascendus Technologies in Bangalore after working as an analyst at Sun Microsystems.

'Managing customer expectations is definitely something I learned when I was in the US. '

It's not just management and marketing know-how. Asian returnees have also been credited for bringing sparks of technological innovation back to their home countries.

Mr Robin Li, a graduate of the State University of New York, co-founded China's largest search engine Baidu. Hotmail is the brainchild of Sabeer Bhatia, who returned to India after graduating from Stanford University.

'The returnees are a lot more innovative and entrepreneurial than the locals are,' Harvard Law School's Wadhwa said. 'So you're already seeing huge benefits to India and China from people who came back.' -- REUTERS