The state of Karnataka – which houses the country’s information technology hub Bengaluru – continues to attract and retain more white collar and leadership talent than any other Indian state, according to a study by executive search firm Xpheno.The study, which covered leadership talent movements and landscape for the 12-month period ending December 2023, shows that only 13 Indian states emerged as talent positive states or states with positive talent balance (PTB) on leadership talent movement. These are states that retain more talent than they lose to other regions.Telangana and Haryana are the other two top states that are net talent positive, showed the study that tracked the talent exchange patterns of professionals in leadership roles.“The access to readily available and accessible specialist leadership talent defines the hiring volume and velocity for an enterprise. The ability of a geography to attract and retain leadership talent is a key talent parameter that impacts the overall hiring success rates,” said Siddharth Verma, business head, Xpheno Executive Search.With 3,600 leadership talent absorptions and 3,000 lost during the 12-month period, Karnataka clocked a positive talent balance of 600 leaders for the study period.Telangana with a positive talent balance of 300 and Haryana with a positive talent balance of 250 emerged as the second and third for leadership talent exchanges.“Karnataka has an active and accessible leadership talent base of 160,000. Bengaluru holds the lion’s share of the active experienced talent pool with a 139,000 count,” said Verma.“Bengaluru has created an ecosystem to host large domestic and international enterprise brands that make the Bellwether employers of leadership talent in the state,” he added.The other large states with sizable positive talent balances are Haryana, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh. There is also a cohort of smaller states with relatively smaller positive talent balances including Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Pondicherry, and Tripura.City-wise, the top five talent positive states were Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune, Hyderabad, Gurugram and Noida.The study also shows that despite the global macroeconomic headwinds and hiring slowdown the country’s tech sector is still the leading employment generating sector holding 32,000 of the active experienced talent pool. It is followed by BFSI, infrastructure, electrical & electronics manufacturing.