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BITS Pilani: India's Entrepreneurship Powerhouse

Pioneering innovation and building unicorns for over three decades

1900
Startups
$60B+
Combined Valuation
15
Unicorns
113K+
Jobs Produced

Unicorns & Major Exits

SanDisk

$19B Exit

Founder: Sanjay Mehrotra

Semiconductors - Flash memory pioneer

Origin: Kanpur (Tier 2)

Swiggy

$11B+ Unicorn

Founder: Sriharsha Majety

Food Delivery - Market leader

Origin: Vijayawada (Tier 2)

Postman

$7.5B Unicorn

Founder: Abhinav Asthana

SaaS/API - Development platform

Origin: Basti (Tier 3)

OfBusiness

$5B Unicorn

Founder: Asish Mohapatra, Bhuvan Gupta

B2B Commerce - SME platform

Origin: Bhubaneswar/Udhampur (Tier 2/3)

Eruditus

$3.2B Unicorn

Founder: Ashwin Damera

EdTech - Executive education

Origin: Mumbai (Tier 1)

Groww

$3B+ Unicorn

Founder: Lalit Keshre

FinTech - Investment platform

Origin: Noida (Tier 1)

Complete Startups Directory

CompanyValuationStatus
RedBus
Phanindra Sama +2
$138M (exit)Acquired
BigBasket
Hari Menon +4
Undisclosed (majority stake)Acquired
Strand Life Sciences
Vijay Chandru +2
Not disclosedActive
Sierra Atlantic
Raju Reddy
UndisclosedAcquired
Hotmail
Sabeer Bhatia +1
$400M (exit)Acquired
i-flex Solutions
Rajesh Hukku
UndisclosedAcquired
SanDisk
Sanjay Mehrotra +2
$19B (exit)Acquired
Swiggy
Sriharsha Majety +2
$11B+Unicorn
Groww
Ishan Bansal +3
$3B+ (est.)Unicorn
Eruditus/Emeritus
Ashwin Damera +1
$3.2BUnicorn
17 startups found

Major Acquisitions Timeline

98
1998

Hotmail

Sabeer Bhatia

$400M → Microsoft

World's first free web-based email service

05
2005

i-flex Solutions

Rajesh Hukku

Majority stake → Oracle

Banking software solutions

09
2009

LogicVision

Vinod Agarwal

Acquired by Synopsys

Electronic design automation

10
2010

Sierra Atlantic

Raju Reddy

Acquired by Hitachi Consulting

IT services company

13
2013

RedBus

Phanindra Sama

$138M → Ibibo Group

India's first online bus booking platform

16
2016

SanDisk

Sanjay Mehrotra

$19B → Western Digital

Flash memory pioneer - largest BITSian exit

16
2016

Media.net

Divyank Turakhia

$900M → Chinese consortium

Contextual advertising platform

21
2021

BigBasket

Hari Menon

Majority stake → Tata Digital

India's largest online grocery platform

Geographic Distribution

Tier 1 Cities

7
33.3% of founders
Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi, Chennai, Noida

Tier 2 Cities

9
42.8% of founders
Chandigarh, Jaipur, Vijayawada, Kanpur, Warangal

Tier 3 Cities

5
23.8% of founders
Basti, Nizamabad, Bhubaneswar, Udhampur