One reason would be similiar timezone. Without knowing the candidate details language, experience and knowledge might be better on the indian side but if the hq is based in sf than the native employee will have more value.

Salary levels aside I have been part of a company based in sf that had money issues so the indian side took over with local financing and closed all worldwide offices and moved r&d to india. Which made sense because the future customer base was in india.

Location and connection to customer base matter. I guess less so for developers compared to the product manager.