As two Indians who have themselves completed their Bachelor’s abroad and then returned to India to back startups, Anshul Bhide and Anmol Maini co-authored a new Substack post this week. While the former is an alum of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Pennsylvania, the latter was once a Bachelor of Science student at UC San Diego in the United States. After finishing their studies in the US, both of them chose to return to their home country and turn investors.

In their new article for Keeping Up With India, a Substack publication dedicated to covering long-form piece on the India Startup Ecosystem, the pair explored many others like them who have risen to the top of their games as big-shot entrepreneurs recognised by all. Giving examples of Lenskart founder Peyush Bansal, Zepto boss Aadit Palicha and Dream11 CEO Harsh Jain, Bhide and Maini shed light on a possibly never-heard-before term to dive deep into the “rise of a new founder archetype in India and their outsized impact on the Indian ecosystem,” as per the painstakingly curated analysis.

The term they highlight in their now viral posts on X and Substack article is ‘BARBIE founders,’ aka “founder who did their Bachelors Abroad and Returned to Build in the Indian Ecosystem.” As revealed in their piece, the term was actually coined by Sajith Pai, a Partner at Blume Ventures.

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Who are India’s BARBIE founders?

In simple words, BARBIE, which stands for Bachelors Abroad and Returned to Build in the Indian Ecosystem, refers to those people who chose international locations like the US, Canada, UK or others for their higher education. After completing their respective Bachelor’s programs at universities abroad, they returned to their home country, India, to lay the foundation of their business models, ultimately contributing to the Indian economy.

The term grabbed the attention of social media users on X once both Maini and Bhide shared the word about their opinion piece on their profiles.

“What do Peyush Bansal, Aadit Palicha and Harsh Jain have in common? they are a part of a new founder archetype emerging in India known as BARBIEs (h/t @sajithpai) – founders who did their Bachelors Abroad and Returned to Build in the Indian Ecosystem,” Anmol Maini wrote on the Elon Musk-led platform.

Linking the essay to his own tweet, Anshul Bhide re-shared Maini’s post, saying “3.7% of Indians who went abroad for undergrad and returned have built unicorns. That’s a higher unicorn rate than students from IIT Delhi (2.7%), IIT Bombay (2.0%), or IIT Madras (1.6%). No one talks about them. We call them BARBIEs (Bachelors Abroad Returned to Build in the Indian Ecosystem).”

“Anmol Maini and I tracked them. Where they studied, what sectors they dominate, their unfair advantages and the blind spots that hold them back.”

In a follow-up post, Bhide added, “Important clarification – I meant 3.7% of all BARBIE companies that we tracked are a unicorn :)”

Abroad-educated Indians return to build unicorns – What the article said

In their Substack article, the two US-educated Indian professionals plugged a “non-exhaustive list” of BARBIE founders.

The names had crossed the 100-mark at the time of writing. Some of these renowned entrepreneurs were Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal (McGill University in Canada), Innovist’s Vimal Bhola (Robert Gordon University in the UK), Foxtale’s Romita Mazumdar (UCLA in the US), FAE Beauty’s Karishma Kewalramani (UC Berkeley in the US), Blue Tokai’s Matt Chitharanjan (NYU in US), Sleepy Owl’s Ajai Thandi (University of Southern California in US), Jimmy’s Cocktail Ankur Bhatia (Carleton in Canada), Dream11’s Harsh Jain (UPenn in US), Nykaa’s Adwaita Nayar (Yale) and Zepto’s Aadit Palicha (Stanford), among others.

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As per their findings, there are 95 active unicorns in India, with 11 unicorns stated by BARBIEs worth more than $1 billion. They further noted that the path carved by the average BARBIE founder saw them spending 3-4 years studying abroad for their undergraduate degree, followed by some work experience in the country in fields like technology, consulting or banking, until they move back to India.

As per Bhide and Maini’s data, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the US ranked as the top choice of BARBIE founders. Thereafter, Stanford, Michigan and University of Southern California (USC) emerged as other popular picks.

Knya founder Abhijeet Kaji told them that his time at Penn and Stanford changed his relationship with time and ambition altogether. “I saw founders and operators who were not in a hurry to “win” a year, but very intentional about building something that would matter in ten or twenty years. That long-term orientation changes the kinds of decisions you make … and how much you are willing to invest before the outcomes are visible,” he said.

Much like Kaji’s response, the Substack article writers mapped out a pattern emerging among BARBIE founder about they “overwhelmingly build companies targeted towards consumers rather than enterprises.”

As for how many Indian undergrad students studied in the US and UK in the past, a compilation of data released by US-based Institute of International Education (IIE) and UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) indicated that 70,000 Indian nationals were studying in the two countries (combined) in 2024.

Bhide and Maini further opined in the article that the businesses established by BARBIE founders could never have been set up by anyone else as their access to higher-education outside the country helped them cultivate innovative ways to tackle challenges and steer past the existing status quo and biases in India.

But that doesn’t always in their favour, as BARBIEs lose out on any connection with the IIT or BITS networks that can’t be ignored in the Indian startup ecosystem. “And coming from predominantly English-speaking privileged backgrounds sometimes works against them as they might have real blind spots about how the long tail of India lives and consumes,” the post states.

“This is why you might not see a Kuku FM or Meesho being founded by a Barbie founder. Finally, some investors are biased against this cohort of founders, viewing them as less hungry because they come from privilege – which can be a fair argument.”