Founders Of Top 100 Upcoming Startups In India - How Many Did An MBA?

The Indian start-up ecosystem in India has boomed ever since the explosion of the dotcom era, with the launch of Rediff.com and Shaadi.com. In 2007, the pioneers of potential decacorn start-ups, Flipkart, was founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal, who were former Amazon employees. As of 2017, the company is valued at approximately $11.6 Billion and was one of the first Indian unicorn start-ups along with Ola. Other unicorns include SnapDeal, PayTM, Hike, Zomato, and most recently, Byju's. Here are some facts about the Indian start-up ecosystem -

• As of 2015, Indian tech-start-ups have created over 80,000 jobs in the country. According to a Grant Thornton & ASSOCHAM report of 2015, India has almost 10,500+ startups, which is estimated to increase to 11,500 by 2020. Annually, approximately 800 new startups are founded every year in India.
• India is the youngest start-up nation across the globe, with most founders being less than 35 years old.
• India is the 3rd largest tech-startup hotspot in the world.

Therefore, it can be fairly concluded that the nation is in the midst of a start-up boom, and more and more new ventures are going to come up in the years to come. What can also be concluded is that we are witnessing an upward graph in terms of entrepreneurial interest and the desire to manage one's own venture. So the very obvious question that would pop-up in a budding entrepreneur's mind would be - Do I need an MBA to start my own firm? How do I learn how to manage a business?  While I lack the experience to answer the latter part of the question, I will attempt to answer the former by providing the educational qualifications of the top-100 start-ups to look out for in 2018, as per SutraHR, a talent acquisition platform for startups. This report will attempt to answer the following questions -

1. Is an MBA necessary to be an entrepreneur? How many non-MBAs have been successful in setting up their own SMEs?
2. Which graduation and post-graduation colleges do most entrepreneurs come from? Is there a trend around this?
3. How many entrepreneurs do not possess any undergraduate or post-graduate qualifications?

Note - Complete data for only 181 out of 198 founders and co-founders was available.

Top 10 Unicorn & Decacorn Start-up Founders In India -

Amongst the top 10 companies with valuation over $1 Billion including Flipkart, Snapdeal, PayTM, Ola, ReNew Power Ventures, Hike, Shopclues, Zomato, InMobi and Quikr:

• 50% of start-up founders have done an MBA, with IIM Calcutta and Harvard Business School producing the maximum number of billionaire start-up founders.
• 70% of this list consists of IIT alumni, with most alumni from IIT Delhi.

Company	Founders	Under graduation	Post-Graduation
Flipkart	Sachin Bansal	IIT Delhi	NA
	Binny Bansal	IIT Delhi	NA
Snapdeal	Kunal Bahl	University of Pennsylvania	Kellogg School of Management
	Rohit Bansal	IIT Delhi	IIT Delhi (M.Tech)
PayTM	Vijay Shekhar Sharma	Delhi College of Engineering	NA
Olacabs	Bhavish Aggarwal	IIT Bombay	NA
	Ankit Bhati	IIT Bombay	NA
ReNew Power Ventures	Sumant Sinha	IIT Delhi	IIM Calcutta
Hike	Kavin Bharti Mittal	University of York	Imperial College London (EEE & Management)
Shopclues	Sanjay Sethi	IIT (BHU)	IIT Delhi (Software Technology)
	Sandeep Aggarwal	Kurukshetra University	Olin Business School
	Radhika Aggarwal	Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya	Washington University St. Louis (MBA)
Zomato Media	Deepinder Goyal	IIT Delhi	NA
	Pankaj Chaddah	IIT Delhi	NA
InMobi	Naveen Tewari	IIT Kanpur	Harvard Business School
	Mohit Saxena	IIT Roorkee	Harvard Business School (AMP)
	Amit Gupta	IIT Kanpur	Harvard Business School
	Abhay Singhal	IIT Kanpur	NA
Quikr	Pranay Chulet	IIT Delhi	IIM Calcutta
	Jiby Thomas	St. Berchman's College	IIM Calcutta

 

Top 100 Upcoming Startups In India - 

• How many start-up founders did not pursue any post-graduation degrees, including MBA?

  Out of the 198 founders (for whom data was available) of 100 start-ups, we find that 81 of the founders have not pursued any post-graduation degree at all, while 65 founders have pursued an MBA degree, and 35 have pursued specialisations in their respective fields (mostly Engineering).

Very clearly, an MBA is NOT a prerequisite to starting your own business. Perhaps in the future, founders may choose to pursue a management degree to develop technical knowledge and form a network, but it is most certainly not necessary for one to pursue an MBA or even a specialisation before setting up a company. However, an observation that can be made is that the majority of the founders in this list have had prior work experience of a minimum of 2 years, which may have aided them in building their own company.

• How many founders pursued an MBA locally?

  Out of the 65 founders who pursued an MBA, 35 of them pursued an MBA from India, while the rest pursued their Business programmes from countries such as the United States, Canada, and England.

• Which Indian B-Schools have produced the most number of Start-up founders in this list?

  The following graph illustrates the management institutes which have produced the maximum number of founders -
  

IIM Ahmedabad alumni have the maximum representation across up-coming start-ups, followed by IIM Calcutta, ISB Hyderabad and IIM Lucknow. It is clear that more than half the start-up founders who DID manage to pursue an MBA hail from the elite B-Schools of the country. NMIMS alumni also appear to have an entrepreneurial streak. When it comes to foreign B-Schools, Harvard Business School and the London Business School have produced the maximum number of start-up founders in this list (including the unicorns and decacorns).

Under Graduate Colleges - 

Apart from post-graduation degrees, we can also focus on the undergraduate colleges which these founders and co-founders belong to. As was the case in the top 100 CEOs of Indian Fortune 500 companies, most start-up leaders hail from IITs. In this list, IITs account for over 3/10th of the total alumni (31.25%) in this list. After the 55 IIT alumni, the maximum number of founders are alumni of NITs (6), Mumbai University (7), Delhi University (8) and Motilal Institute of Technology (4). 90% (estimated) of the start-up founders in this list are Engineers. Also read - CEOs OF Top 100 Indian Companies - How Many Did An MBA? Here is the complete list of founders of upcoming start-ups (as per SutraHR) and their educational qualifications:

Company	Founders	Undergraduation	Post-Graduation
9Stacks	Sudhir Kamath	Delhi Institute of Technology	IIM Ahmedabad
	Pratik Kumar	IIT Kharagpur	IIT Kharagpur
	Abhinav Nigam	IIT Kharagpur	NA
	Rishabh Mathur	IIT Kharagpur	NA
Active Intelligence	Ravi Shankar	Madras Christian College	IMDR (MBA)
	Parikshit Paspulati	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
AEON Learning	Karthik KS	NIT Kurukshetra	SP College of Management
	Vikalp Jain	IIT Bombay	IIT Bombay
Airpay	Kunal Jhunjhunwala	Rochester Institute of Technology	London School of Economics
	Amit Kapoor	Mumbai University	NMIMS Mumbai
	Rohan Deshpande	Mumbai University	Mumbai University (MBA)
ALT Balaji	Ekta Kapoor	Mithibai College	NA
Ask Arvi	Sushant Reddy	IIT Bombay	Columbia Business School
	Mandar Zope	IIT Bombay	NA
	Ashwin Narkhede	IIT Bombay	IIT Bombay (M.Tech)
Avishkaar Box	Tarun Bhalla	Delhi University (Computer Science)	University of Washington
Biryani By Kilo	Kaushik Roy	Hotel Management	NA
	Vishal Jindal	IIT-BHU	Martin J. Whitman School of Management
Blowhorn	Nikhil Shivaprasad	VNIT Nagpur	North Carolina State University
	Mithun Srivatsa	VNIT Nagpur	Cambridge Judge Business School
Boltt Sports Technologies	Aayushi Kishore	SRCC	Harvard Business School
	Arnav Kishore	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Boxx.Ai	Ajay Kashyap	IIT Bombay	NA
	Prakhar Raj	IIT Bombay	NA
	Shitiz Bansal	IIT Delhi	NA
Cash Suvidha	Anoop Garg	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Rajesh Gupta	Delhi University (B.Com)	NA
Call Health	Hari Thalapalli	Madras University	Loyola College
Chimple Learning	Srikanth Talapadi	University of Mysore	IIM Bangalore
Clip	Nav Agrawal	IIT Bombay	NA
CoWrks	Sidharth Menda	Bentley University	NA
CrediFiable	Presha Paragash	London School of Economics & Political Science	The Wharton School
Credy	Harshit Vaishnav	IIT Madras	IIT Madras
	Pratish Gandhi	Chennai Mathematical Institute	Chennai Mathematical Institute
CureFit	Ankit Nagori	IIT Guwahati	NA
	Mukesh Bansal	IIT Kanpur	NA
Doctor Insta	Amit Munjal	Data Unavailable	Indiana University Bloomington
Drivezy	Abhishek Mahajan	IIT Bombay	NA
	Amit Sahu	Motilal Institute of Technology	NA
	Ashwarya Singh	Motilal Institute of Technology
	Vasant Verma	Motilal Institute of Technology
Dunzo	Ankur Aggarwal	Hansraj College (Computer Science)	IIT Roorkee (Computer Science)
	Dalvir Suri	Sardar Patel Institute of Technology	NA
	Kabeer Biswas	Mumbai University	NMIMS Mumbai
	Mukund Jha	Motilal Institute of Technology	Columbia Engineering
Eatigo	Judy Tan	Nanyang Technological University	Imperial College London
	Michael Cluzel	California State University	Heidelberg University
	Pumin Yuvacharuskul	Data Unavailable	UCL
	Siddhanta Kothari	ICAI	NA
ECom Express	K. Satyanarayana	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Manju Dhawan	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Sanjeev Saxena	RDV University (B.Com)	NA
	T.A. Krishnan	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
East India Comedy	Sorabh Pant	Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics	Mumbai University
ERA	Karmaditya Bagga	Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University	NA
	Priyansha Jain	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Ajay Vishnu	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Fella Homes	Amit Gupta	IIT Roorkee	NA
	Digendra Singh Rathore	IIT Roorkee	NA
	Kunal Singh	Purdue University	Stanford University
	Virender Pratap Singh	IIT Roorkee	NA
	Yadwinder Paul Singh	IIT Roorkee	NA
FilmyGyan	Aftab Khan	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
FingerLix	Shree Bharambe	College of Engineering, Pune	IIM Bangalore
FlintoBox	Arunprasad Durairaj	Madurai Kamaraj University	The Tuck School of Business
	Shreenidhi Srirangam	PES College of Engineering	NA
	Vijay Gandhi	Anna University	NA
Flochat	Aahana Mulla	St. Xavier's College	Aston University
	Yuvraj Bhalla	National College	Frameboxx Animation Institute
	Prateek Lal	Data Unavailable	Welingkar Institute of Management
Flock	Bhavin Turakhia	Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics	NA
ftcash	Deepak Kothari	SRCC	NA
	Sanjeev Chandak	IIT Kharagpur	The Wharton School
	Vaibhav Lodha	NIT Trichy	IIM Calcutta
Fynd	Farooq Adam	IIT Bombay	IIT Bombay
	Harsh Shah	IIT Bombay	NA
	Sreeraman Mohan Girija	University of Kerala	IIT Bombay
GamingMonk	Abhay Sharma	Amity Institute of Technology	NA
	Ashwin Haryani	Amity Institute of Technology	NA
Get My Parking	Chirag Jain	Galgotias College of Engineering & Technology	IIT Madras
	Rasik Pansare	Pune Institute of Computer Technology	FMS Delhi
GoCoop	Siva Devireddy	Data Unavailable	Arizona State University
GoFro	Amitabh Misra	IIT Kanpur	Walter A. Haas School of Business
Gold Farm	Abhilash Thirupathy	Meenakshi Ammal Dental College	IIM Lucknow
Graphic India	Gotham Chopra	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Sharad Devarajan	Syracuse University	Columbia University
	Suresh Seetharaman	School of Visual Arts	NA
HalaPlay	Swapnil Saurav	BITS Pilani	NA
HandyTrain	Devadas Krishnan	Mahatma Gandhi University	IIM Ahmedabad
Hansel.io	Mudit Krishna Mathur	NIT Warangal	NA
	Parminder Singh	IIIT	NA
	Varun Ramamurthy Dinakar	Anna University	IIM Calcutta
HexOctane	Jhenkar Dixit	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
HipCask	Aneesh Bhasin	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Homergize	Vinod R. Kaushik	BMS College of Engineering	University of Maryland (MBA)
icanstay	Avneet Soni	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Puneet Gupta	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
InnerChef	Rajesh Sawhney	Delhi College of Engineering	Harvard Business School
Innov8 Coworking	Ritesh Malik	MGR Medical University	Harvard University
	Shailesh Gupta	IIT Kharagpur	IIT Kharagpur
	Sumit Ranka	Dwarkadas J Sanghvi College of Engineering	NA
iNurture	Ashwin Ajila	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	R Lakshminarayanan	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Josh Talks	Shobhit Banga	Lancaster University	NA
	Supriya Paul	Sri Venkateswara College	NA
Koinex	Aditya Naik	BITS Pilani	BITS Pilani
	Rahul Raj	IIT Kharagpur	IIT Kharagpur
	Rakesh Yadav	IIT Delhi	NA
KrazyBee	Karthikeyan K	National University of Singapore	National University of Singapore
	Madhusudhan E	NIT Surathkal	University of Toronto
	Wan Hong	Wuhan University	Edith Cowan University
LetsTransport	Pushkar Singh	IIT Kharagpur	IIT Kharagpur
	Sudarshan Ravi	IIT Kharagpur	IIT Kharagpur
LBB	Suchita Salwan	Hindu College, DU	NA
m.Paani	Akanksha Hazari	Princeton University	University of Cambridge
Meesho	Sanjeev Barnwal	IIT Delhi	NA
	Vidit Aatrey	IIT Delhi	NA
Mobie Fit	Gul Panag	Punjabi University	Panjab University
Money View	Puneet Agarwal	IIT Delhi	Krannert School of Management
	Sanjay Aggarwal	IIT Delhi	NA
Mr Button	Deepak Khetan	Delhi University	Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
NanoNets	Prathamesh Juvatkar	IIT Gandhinagar	NA
	Sarthak Jain	IIT Gandhinagar	NA
Netmeds.com	Pradeep Dadha	Loyola College	NA
NiYo Solutions	Virender Bisht	NIT Kurukshetra	NA
	Vinay Bagri	IIRM, Hyderabad	IIM Calcutta
Noticeboard	Sarath Chandran	IIT Kharagpur	NA
	Vishal Gahlaut	Punjab Engineering College	IIM Ahmedabad
	Vishesh Dahinwal	IIT Delhi	IIM Ahmedabad
Numberz	Aditya Tulsian	Savitribai Phule College of Engineering	ISB, Hyderabad
	Baskar Ganapathy	University of Madras	California State University
	Rajeev Chari	SGSITS, Indore	ISB, Hyderabad
OncoStem Diagnostics	Manjiri Bakre	University of Mumbai	University of Baroda
OpenOut	Arun Rafi	G.R. Damodaran College of Science	SIBM, Bangalore
Play Shifu	Dinesh Advani	IIT Kharagpur	NA
	Vivek Goyal	IIT Kharagpur	Stanford University Graduate Business School
Propstory	Ashish Mahajan	IIT Bombay	ISB, Hyderabad
	Bhagwandas Paliwal	IIT Bombay	NA
Qbera	Aditya Kumar	University of Warwick	Cass Business School
RenewBuy	Balachander Sekhar	IIT Bombay	IIM Calcutta
Rentickle	Amit Sodhi	Delhi College of Engineering	ISB, Hyderabad
	Vineet Chawla	Delhi University	Mumbai University (MBA)
Sendd	Sumeet Wadhwa	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
Sensibol Audio Technologies	Sujeet Kini	Mumbai University	IIT Bombay
	Nagesh Nayak	Thakur College of Engineering	IIT Bombay
	Vishweshwara Rao	Mumbai University	Miami University
	Preeti Rao	IIT Bombay	NA
	Sachin Pant	Vishwakarma Institute of Technology	IIT Bombay
Sequretek	Anand Naik	KIT College of Engineering	NA
	Pankit Desai	SS Engineering College	BK School of Business Management
SigTuple	Apurv Anand	IIT Delhi	NA
	Rohit Pandey	IIIT, Bangalore	NA
	Tathagato Dastidar	IIT Kharagpur	NA
SlicePay	Deepak Malhotra	BITS Pilani	NA
	Rajan Bajaj	IIT Kharagpur	NA
Smaash Entertainment	Shripal Morakhia	University of Pune	NA
Stanza Living	Anindya Dutta	IIT Kharagpur	IIM Ahmedabad
	Sandeep Dalmiya	Delhi College of Engineering	IIM Ahmedabad
StoreKing	Govardhan K	VV Puram Science College	Adarsha Jain College
	Sridhar Gundaiah	Visvesaraya Technological University	University of Greenwich (MS)
StyleCracker	Dhimaan Shah	Northwestern University	NA
Sumeru	Harish Ramachandran	IIT Bombay	NA
ten3T	Rahul Shingrani	Thadomal Shahani Engineering College	Drexel University
	Prasad Bhat	Visvesaraya Technological University	NA
Terribly Tiny Tales	Anuj Gosalia	Narsee Monjee College of Economics & Commerce	Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India
	Chintan Ruparel	SIES College	NA
TAOAutomation	Jawahar Bekay	St. Xavier's College	SPJIMR
	Arjun Vaznaik	St. Xavier's College	Asian Institute of Management
The Bohri Kitchen	Nafisa Kapadia	Data Unavailable	Data Unavailable
	Munaf Kapadia	Data Unavailable	NMIMS Mumbai
The Moms Co	Malika Datt Sadani	Savitribai Phule, Pune University	Welingkar Institute of Management
	Mohit Sadaani	Thadomal Shahani Engineering College	IIM Ahmedabad
The Office Pass	Aditya Verma	Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur	IMI, New Delhi
ThirdWatch	Adarsh Jain	IIT BHU	NA
	Shashank Agarwal	Rajasthan Technical University	NA
Touchkin	Jo Aggarwal	IIT Delhi	IIM Lucknow
	Ramakant Vempati	IIT Kanpur	IIM Lucknow, London Business School
Vahdam Teas	Bala Sarda	Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies	NA
WeDoSky	Jaspreet Makkar	Jaypee Institute of Information Technology	NA
WishBerry	Anshulika Dubey	Miranda House, Delhi University	NA
	Priyanka Agarwal	The Wharton School	School of Engineering & Applied Sciences
WittyFeed	Parveen Singhal	SRM University	NA
	Shashank Vaishnav	SRM University	NA
	Vinay Singhal	SRM University	NA
Wydr	Devesh Rai	Delhi University	IIM Calcutta
Yaantra	Ankit Saraf	Data Unavailable	Bundelkhand University
	Anmol Gupta	IPS Academy	NA
	Jayant Jha	Delhi University	NA
YourQuote	Ashish Singh	IIT Delhi	NA
	Harsh Snehanshu	IIT Delhi	NA
ZestMoney	Ashish Anantharaman	Mumbai University	NA
	Lizzie Chapman	The University of Edinburgh	NA
	Priya Sharma	IIT BHU	London Business School
ZiffyHomes	Salil Agarwal	Uttar Pradesh Technical University	NA
	Sanchal Ranjan	NIT Surathkal	NA
	Saurabh Kumar	Marine Engineering & Research Institute	IIT Kanpur (MBA)
ZipLoan	Kshitij Puri	Delhi University	UCLA Anderson School of Management
	Shalabh Singhal	IIT BHU	NA

If you have any suggestions to improve this report, let me know in the comments below. Also read - Is An MBA A Plus Or A Minus In The Start-up World?