IITs Have Produced More Unicorn Founders Than MIT, Cornell: Study

The haloed Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have emerged as the fourth largest producer of founders of unicorn startups in the world. The term unicorn startup refers to startups that are valued at $1 billion (Rs. 6,600 crores) or more.

According to a report by UK-based software firm Sage Group, IITs (with 12 startups valued at $1 billion or more) take the fourth spot in the list of alma mater of unicorns, behind Stanford (51), Harvard (37), and University of California (18). Other names in the list include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, University of Oxford, Tel Aviv University, Cornell, University of South Carolina, University of Waterloo, INSEAD, WHU, University of Michigan, and Brigham Young University.

Unicorn startups with IITian founders include Flipkart (Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal), Snapdeal (Rohit Bansal), Shopclues (Sanjay Sethi), Ola (Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati), Zomato (Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah), Quikr (Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas), ReNew Power Ventures (Sumant Sinha), and InMobi (Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta, Abhay Singhal, and Naveen Tiwari), among others.

With 10 unicorns based in the country, India is the third-largest hub of startups valued at over $1 billion in the world, following the US (144 unicorns) and China (47 unicorns). The UK leads in Europe with nine unicorns, followed by Germany (6) and Sweden (2). Canada is home to 3 unicorns and South Korea to 2, while Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, Indonesia, Russia, Czech Republic, and France have one each.

According to a Nasscom/ Zinnov research published in 2016, Bengaluru is home to 26 percent startups in India, followed by Delhi-NCR (23 percent) and Mumbai (17 percent). Hyderabad (8 percent), Chennai (6 percent), and Pune (6 percent)round off the top six cities in India for startups.