Why 9 Out of 10 Indian Nurses Looking To Work Abroad Come From South
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If you are a nursing student in Kerala or Tamil Nadu thinking about a career overseas, you are part of an overwhelming majority. A new survey from global talent mobility platform TerraTern, based on over 2,500 enquiries collected over the past year, found that a striking 90–95% of all overseas nursing enquiries came from South India, and the region’s dominance isn’t spread evenly, it’s concentrated almost entirely in two states.
Kerala and Tamil Nadu Are Doing Most of the Talking
Between them, Kerala and Tamil Nadu account for roughly 65% of all enquiries TerraTern received. Karnataka follows at 15%, and Telangana at 12%. That leaves the rest of the country, which is home to roughly half of India’s total nursing colleges, contributing less than 8% of enquiries combined.
It’s a genuinely lopsided picture, and it says less about where India’s nursing talent actually is and more about where the awareness of overseas opportunity has taken root. Kerala, in particular, has decades of history sending nurses abroad, which means today’s students grow up surrounded by people who’ve already made that leap, a parent’s colleague, a family friend, a senior from college. That kind of informal network turns out to matter enormously. In much of the rest of India, that same exposure simply doesn’t exist yet, even in states producing plenty of qualified graduates.
A Younger, More Prepared Applicant Pool
The survey also points to a shift in when students start thinking about working abroad. This year, 65% of enquiries came from final-year students or graduates under 25, up sharply from 48% last year. That’s a meaningful jump, it suggests more students are treating an international career as part of their original plan rather than something to consider only after years of domestic experience.
That said, experience still matters for a meaningful chunk of applicants. Around 35% of enquiries came from candidates with hands-on experience in ICU/CCU, operation theatres, emergency care, NICU, paediatrics, and geriatric or long-term care, specialisations that tend to travel well internationally, particularly to countries like Germany with ageing populations and growing care needs.
The Opportunity Nobody’s Really Looking At
Here’s where the survey gets genuinely interesting. Nursing isn’t the only healthcare profession with real demand in Germany, physiotherapy is too. But while nursing generated over 2,500 enquiries, physiotherapy barely crossed 120, roughly 5% of the total.
That gap doesn’t appear to reflect a lack of opportunity. Physiotherapy roles in Germany are open even to freshers, something not always true in nursing, and cover areas like rehabilitation and mobility support, particularly in elderly care settings, a segment of Germany’s healthcare system that’s only growing. What seems to be missing isn’t demand from employers, it’s awareness among Indian students that this path even exists.
“We are seeing a clear shift in how young healthcare professionals think about overseas careers,” said Divyansh Chaudhari, Founder of TerraTern. “Nursing continues to see strong interest, particularly from South India, but there are other opportunities that students are not looking at closely enough. Physiotherapy is one such area. The opportunities are there, but awareness among Indian candidates is still limited. Students need to understand the options available to them beyond the career paths they are already familiar with.”
What It Actually Takes to Get There
For students seriously considering Germany, the path isn’t just about picking a profession and applying. Language proficiency, qualification recognition, and documentation are all steps that need to be sorted out well in advance, and for nursing candidates specifically, clinical experience often plays a meaningful role in how competitive an application ends up being.
The Bigger Takeaway
What this data really points to is an awareness gap sitting right alongside a genuine opportunity gap. South India’s decades-long relationship with overseas nursing has built a kind of institutional knowledge, students there simply know more, earlier, because the pathway has already been walked by people around them. The rest of India isn’t necessarily short on qualified healthcare graduates. It’s short on visibility into options like physiotherapy that exist well beyond the nursing track most students default to.
For any healthcare student thinking about their future, the message from this survey is fairly direct: the planning doesn’t need to wait until after graduation. Researching countries, professions and pathways early, well before the degree is even finished, can open up a career map considerably wider than the one most students currently see in front of them.
