Indian founders account for $560B of company value abroad

91% of Indian diaspora unicorns are based in the US

New report from Prosus and Dealroom highlights the scale of Indian entrepreneurial talent and the value created by Indian-origin founders building businesses globally

Founders who grew up in India account for $560B of founder-share-attributed company value in current and former unicorns abroad, according to the new Indian Diaspora Index from Prosus and Dealroom. The report demonstrates the value created by founders from India who went on to build businesses across global markets.

Tracking 205 overseas unicorns with at least one founder who grew up in India, the Index finds that 70 unicorns totalling $243B in value were built by all-Indian founders such as Jay Chaudhry (Zscaler), Arvind Jain, Arvind Nithrakashyap, Bipul Sinha and Soham Mazumdar (Rubrik), Ajeet Singh, Dheeraj Pandey and Mohit Aron (Nutanix), and Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta (Skild). Another 135 unicorns with Indian-origin founders in the core team such as, Palo Alto, Bloom Energy, Astera Labs and Perplexity, contribute $317B on this founder-share^* basis. Together, these companies account for approximately $560B on a founder-share basis.

In contrast, 102 unicorns based in India account for approximately $349B on a founder-share basis, led by Flipkart ($36B), Zomato ($30B), and Groww ($16B).

Saurav Jain, Principal Investor, Prosus India, said, "The Indian Diaspora Index measures something we have seen and experienced first-hand in India: exceptional talent density with the ambition to build at enormous scale, often by solving some of the country’s most complex and consequential problems. Indian founders have the ability to turn technology, ingenuity and deep local insight into businesses that can fundamentally change how people live and work.  That is what has kept us investing in the country for nearly two decades. What has changed in this period is that founders no longer have to leave to build at scale. The market, the capital and the operating talent are now here."

A striking finding is the geographic concentration of this success. The separate, broader birth-origin analysis shows that 62% of its companies are based in the United States, making it the dominant ecosystem for Indian-origin founders building high-value companies. In total, 200 of the 323 companies in this broader cohort were either started (178) or relocated (22) to the United States. This birth-origin analysis includes founders who left India as children and companies based in India; it is separate from the narrower overseas index of founders who grew up in India.

Commenting on this finding, Saurav added, “The footprint of India’s entrepreneurial talent extends well beyond the country’s borders. The index offers an important perspective on how Indian-origin founders are contributing to value creation across global markets, with the US emerging as a particularly significant ecosystem for this activity.”

The findings point to the increasingly global nature of India’s entrepreneurial footprint, extending the country’s influence far beyond its domestic startup landscape. 91% (187 of 205) of overseas unicorns in the Indian Diaspora Index are based in the US.

To delve deeper into these findings, read the full report here. 

Dealroom.co is a global intelligence platform for discovering and tracking the most promising companies, technologies and ecosystems. Clients include many of the world’s foremost organizations such as Sequoia, Accel, Index Ventures, NATO Innovation Fund, NATO Diana, European Defence Fund, ESA, McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, Google, AWS, Microsoft, Stripe.

Dealroom partners closely with local tech ecosystem development agencies and enablers, to create a comprehensive multi-dimensional blueprint of the tech ecosystem, including capital, talent, innovation, entrepreneurship and overall economic dynamism.

*Each company is divided into equal founder slices; only qualifying founders’ slices count, irrespective of actual equity ownership.
**$560B is approximately $560B of founder-share-attributed company value, not the full value of these companies or founders’ personal wealth.