Rajiv Batra left IIT Kanpur with an electrical engineering degree before heading to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Years later, his career would lead to Palo Alto Networks, one of the biggest names in cybersecurity.
Jay Chaudhry followed a similar path. After studying at IIT-BHU Varanasi and the University of Cincinnati, he went on to build Zscaler, another major cybersecurity company. Same goes for Aravind Srinivas who did BTech from IIT Madras, then went to Berkeley for further studies and eventually started Perplexity.
These are not isolated success stories. They are part of a much larger pattern, founders who grew up in India have built companies that are now worth around $560 billion outside India, according to a new Indian Diaspora Index by Prosus and Dealroom. The index attempts to put numbers behind something that has long been visible in Silicon Valley and the global technology industry, the strong presence of Indian-origin entrepreneurs.
Counting the $560 billion
The index tracked 205 current and former unicorns outside India that have at least one founder who grew up in India. The US dominates this group. As many as 187 companies, or 91.2% of the total, are based in the US.
The $560 billion figure, however, does not represent the personal wealth of these founders. It is based on the founder-share-attributed value of the companies under the methodology used by Prosus and Dealroom. In other words, it is an estimate of the value created through these companies and attributed to their founders, rather than a list of how much money the founders have in their bank accounts.
The 205 companies can be divided into two groups. Around 70 companies were founded entirely by people who grew up in India. These companies account for about $243 billion in attributed value. The other 135 companies had mixed founding teams, with at least one founder who grew up in India. These companies account for a larger $317 billion.
This second group includes well-known companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Bloom Energy, Astera Labs and Perplexity. The numbers show that the Indian diaspora’s contribution to global technology is not limited to companies founded exclusively by Indian-origin entrepreneurs. Indian-origin founders have also played a role in building companies with diverse, international founding teams.
The US remains the main destination
The numbers become even larger when the definition is expanded. The $560 billion figure focuses specifically on founders who grew up in India. If the index instead looks at founders who were born in India, it identifies 323 unicorns worldwide. Of these, 102 are in India, 200 are in the US and 21 are elsewhere. This means the US alone accounts for 61.9% of the global unicorns founded by people born in India.
The distinction between being born in India and growing up in India is important. Many Indian-origin entrepreneurs moved abroad at a young age for education or with their families and eventually became part of the technology ecosystems in the US and other countries.
IITs remain a major pipeline
One institution stands out repeatedly in the education backgrounds of these founders: Indian Institutes of Technology. IIT Delhi has the highest number of founder education records in the index, with 47. It is followed by Stanford with 37, IIT Bombay with 31 and IIT Madras with 28.
Overall, 12 institutions, including five IITs, three IIMs, BITS Pilani and three leading US universities account for 307 of the 600 founder education records in the index. The five IITs alone contribute 153 records, or roughly a quarter of all the records.
There is an important caveat here. The index counts education records rather than individual founders. Some founders have more than one degree, so the figures should not be interpreted as meaning that every founder attended an IIT. The data also shows that the pipeline is bigger than the IIT-IIM system. Founders in the index also came through BITS Pilani, NITs and universities in India and abroad.
Technology remains the dominant background
The founders’ academic backgrounds also reveal a strong technical orientation.Of the 405 records for which the field of study is known, 238 were in technical subjects. Another 86 records combined technology and business, while 76 were business-only. Just five fell outside these categories.
This means most of the founders in the dataset had either a technical education or a combination of technical and business training. It is particularly relevant given the nature of many of the companies they went on to build. Technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, enterprise software and other engineering-heavy sectors feature prominently among the companies associated with the diaspora.
At the same time, the number of founders with hybrid technology-and-business backgrounds suggests that technical expertise was not the only factor. Business education and experience also formed part of the background of many entrepreneurs.
Most founders were not young
The data also challenges the popular image of the technology founder as someone who starts a billion-dollar company straight out of college.
Among 383 founder records with information on age at the time of founding, only nine founders started their companies before turning 22. The largest group, comprising 135 records, were founders aged 40 or older when they started their companies. Overall, 70% of the founders were at least 30 years old when they founded their companies.
The figures suggest that many of these entrepreneurs had already spent years building technical expertise, gaining industry experience and developing professional networks before starting their companies.
In other words, the Indian-origin founder story is not primarily one of young graduates leaving college to immediately launch startups. For many, entrepreneurship came after years of education and work.
India is building its own unicorns too
The diaspora story does not mean that Indian entrepreneurs have had to leave the country to create large technology companies. The index separately tracks 101 India-based unicorns, with a combined founder-attributed value of around $349 billion.
The largest companies in this group include Flipkart, valued at around $36 billion on this basis; Zomato at around $30 billion; and Groww at around $16 billion. Other companies in the group include Lenskart, Policybazaar, Swiggy and Razorpay.
According to Saurav Jain, Principal Investor at Prosus India, the growth of India’s domestic startup ecosystem reflects the increasing availability of capital, talent and market opportunities within the country. This means Indian founders now have more options. They can build companies for the global market from the US or other countries, but they can also build large businesses from India itself.
One talent pool, two ecosystems
Companies founded by people who grew up in India account for around $560 billion in founder-attributed value outside India. The index’s India-based unicorns account for another $349 billion on the same basis. This adds up to nearly $910 billion in founder-attributed value linked to people who grew up in India.
The figure should not be treated as a measure of personal wealth, and the methodology has clear limitations. The index covers a defined set of unicorns and uses founder-share attribution rather than actual founder ownership or personal net worth. Even with those caveats, the data points to a significant trend.
Indian-origin entrepreneurs are deeply embedded in the global technology ecosystem. Some have built companies entirely with Indian-origin founding teams, while others have worked with international co-founders. Many have technical degrees from Indian institutions, followed by education or careers in the US.
At the same time, India’s own startup ecosystem has grown large enough to create billion-dollar companies at home. The result is less a story of Indian talent leaving India and more a story of an increasingly global talent pool. Some founders build in Bengaluru, some in Silicon Valley and others across multiple markets.