The alumni who built things: where they ranked, what they studied, and what happened next.
By his own account Narayana Murthy ranked 17th in the IIT entrance exam and could not afford to go. He reached IIT Kanpur five years later, saw his first computer through a glass window, and built Infosys from ₹10,000.
Founder StoriesTwo IIT Madras Engineering Design classmates went back to campus to build a battery pack, fell for the test scooter, and nearly shut down three times. On 26 October 2026 Ather Energy reported its first profitable quarter.
Founder StoriesHe sold computers for Wipro after IT-BHU, landed in Boston with his father's $3,000 savings, ran Google's business side, lost SoftBank's succession race, and at 50 took over Palo Alto Networks. Revenue has since grown from $2.27 billion to $11.48 billion.
Founder StoriesHe studied electrical engineering at IIT Kanpur, joined IBM's research lab in 1990 and spent 30 years inside one company before he ran it. He was a principal architect of the $34 billion Red Hat deal. In July 2026 he told investors "this quarter we faltered", and IBM reports again on 21 October.
Founder StoriesHe wanted computer science at IIT Roorkee, got mechanical engineering, and was fined in first year for hacking the institute website. He met Shashank Kumar in a student coding lab, was turned down by about 100 bankers in 2014, and built Razorpay. In October 2026 it began selling ChatGPT ads for Indian brands, with an IPO filed confidentially.
Founder StoriesHe calls himself a bad student until Class 8. He cleared JEE on his first attempt, took an ISRO job paying ₹35,000–40,000 a month out of IIT Kharagpur, and in 2018 co-founded Skyroot Aerospace. On 18 July 2026 its Vikram-1 became India's first private rocket to reach orbit, and on 30 September TIME named him to the TIME100 Next list.
Founder StoriesSurojit Chatterjee arrived at IIT Kharagpur having only seen computers at railway reservation counters, and learned to type at night. Twenty-five years later he had built mobile ads at Google, run product at Flipkart through demonetisation and been Coinbase's product chief when it went public. On 23 September 2026 his AI company, Ema, raised $77 million. One of its showcase customers is Wipro.
Founder StoriesOn 6 August 2015, Informatica's ticker died, Anil Chakravarthy became acting CEO the same day, and a former Adobe CEO was installed as his chairman. Eleven years later the Varanasi-trained engineer takes Adobe's own chair — picked over the favourite, mid-AI-crisis, with the stock falling 7% on the news. The unhurried, fully-documented route from IT-BHU CSE '89 to the corner office.
Founder StoriesHe lived in room NB 24 of Kumaon Hostel, graduated in Mechanical Engineering in 1995, and wrote Five Point Someone fifteen times over three years before work. Indian publishers rejected it for two years — partly because he sent a marketing plan with the manuscript. The full story, including what he was actually paid for 3 Idiots, and why the "IIT Delhi hated the book" story has no source behind it.
Founder StoriesSachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are not brothers, not cousins, not related in any way. They met in the summer of 2005 in an IIT Delhi hardware lab, because both had to redo final-year project work. Two years later they started a bookstore in a Koramangala flat. Eleven years after that, Walmart paid approximately $16 billion for approximately 77 percent of it. This is what the record actually says, including the batch-year contradiction almost every account gets muddled.
Founder StoriesA medical officer at IIT Bombay told him he could not walk the corridors. Fifty-seven years later, 52 students started a degree at a school with his name on it. What Romesh Wadhwani actually funded, what the $9.3 billion really meant, and what the money has not been shown to do.
Founder StoriesThe man who created Google News graduated from IIT Madras in 1991, built the first prototype six weeks after 9/11, founded Google's India R&D lab, then called his own creation "shameful and irresponsible" in 2017. He quietly rejoined Google in 2019 and is still there.
Founder StoriesThe first IIT graduate to co-found a decacorn (Sun Microsystems, 1982), the first VC firm partner to write OpenAI a cheque ($50M for 5% in Jan 2019), and #1 on the 2026 Midas List for the 19th time. Net worth $13.4B, KV raising a fresh $5.5B. But his India engagement is more speech than cheque.
Founder StoriesTwo-act builder — helped Murthy build Infosys through NASDAQ '99, then walked out for Aadhaar and cabinet-rank public service. Now heads Delhi's 2026 exam-reform task force.
Founder StoriesAn M.Tech from IIT Delhi walked into a Boise, Idaho DRAM fab in 1990 and quietly out-invented Thomas Edison. This is the story of Gurtej Singh Sandhu, the Micron Fellow who redesigned how the world stores information.
Founder StoriesAravind Srinivas — Perplexity CEO, IIT Madras Electrical Engineering (2012-2017 dual degree) — took a $21B AI company from AIR ~980 in JEE Advanced to a $750M Microsoft Azure GPU deal in early 2026. Full profile: Chennai origins, IIT Madras years under Prof. Balaraman Ravindran (9 papers at ICLR/AAAI/NeurIPS as an undergrad), Berkeley PhD under Pieter Abbeel, internships at OpenAI/DeepMind/Google Brain, founding Perplexity in August 2022, going after Google out loud, and the Bezos + NVIDIA + Cristiano Ronaldo cap table.
Founder StoriesIIT Bombay 2008 CSE. Left Microsoft 2010. Built Ola. Ola Electric IPO Aug 2024 → briefly worth ₹21,000 crore → ~₹57,000 crore of shareholder value destroyed by July 2026. Krutrim's chip programme scrapped, Kruti AI pulled from stores. Three CEO roles, one founder, one honest read.
Founder StoriesIIT Madras EE '89, JEE AIR 27, Princeton PhD, Padma Shri 2021. Vembu turned down the only VC term sheet Zoho ever saw, moved to a village in 2019, and this week is in Japan importing small-town SMBs to rural Tamil Nadu. Sourced profile with FY25 numbers and r/developersIndia critique.
Founder StoriesThe honest profile. Goyal took Zomato from a Bain canteen menu PDF to India's first ₹1 lakh crore consumer-tech IPO, then stepped down as Eternal CEO in February 2026. With sourced timeline, the IIT Delhi DAA record, and the r/indianstartups read on his last 6 months.
Founder StoriesThe honest profile. Sundar Pichai broke the IIT founder myth by becoming the highest-leverage operator in tech. Sourced timeline, KGPian voice, and the uncomfortable critique.
Founder StoriesThe real, unpolished story of IITianVibes — how two co-founders stuck on campus after failing a course turned a broken Google-Form merch system into a brand serving IITs across India, and why we run it for the vibes.