Since its founding as a university in 1964, BITS Pilani has consistently been regarded as one of India’s best engineering schools, know the list of the best startups by its alumni
BITS Pilani has grown to now have four campuses in total, including those in Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad, and Dubai.
From the time of G.D. Birla to the present, BITS Pilani has always been supported by the entrepreneurial spirit. This university has produced numerous significant businesses, including three unicorns.
List Of Top Best Startups Started By BITS Pilani Alumni As Startup Policy And Culture Helps Students Thrives
In accordance with one of the MIT reports, which asserts that more than 20,000 enterprises owned by BITS alumni have an impact on the world economy. With an enterprise value of more than 2 trillion dollars, BITS Alumni would rank among the top 10 economies in the world if they were a sovereign nation.
In terms of the overall number of companies, BITS Pilani is in third place behind IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi when compared to other Indian universities.
While BITS has made several startups become heroes in this piece, we will be focusing on the most well-known and prosperous businesses.
Hotmail
Sabeer Bhatia, a well-known graduate of BITS Pilani, co-founded Hotmail.com in 1996, which Microsoft eventually purchased for an estimated $400 million in 1998. Following the acquisition, Sabeer spent nearly a year working for Microsoft before launching an e-commerce business with Arzoo Inc.
JaxtrSMS, a free messaging service founded by Sabeer Bhatia, aims to emulate what Hotmail accomplished for email.
Sandisk
The co-founder and former CEO of SanDisk, which uses flash memory instead of hard disc drives, is Sanjay Mehrotra. In Bits Pilani, he completed his Electrical Engineering degree.
In Silicon Valley, Sanjay Mehrotra, Eli Harari, and Jack Yuan founded Sandisk as a tiny business in 1988. (USA). Sanjay Mehrotra joined SanDisk in 2017 and was appointed as the company’s new chief executive officer of Micron Inc.
Onida Electronics
Mr Gulu Mirchandani co-founded the Onida Group in 1981, and he is still its co-founder and chairman.
MIRC Electronics Ltd. is the Onida Group’s flagship business. In addition, Mr Mirchandani serves on the boards of KEC International Ltd. and VIP Industries. Fractal Analytics is the second-largest company in India for Big Data, Analytics, AI, and Machine Learning.
He graduated from BITS Pilani with a BE (Mechanical) degree. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Network Optimization-focused Supply Chain Solutions company Algorithm Tech Pvt. Ltd. He has established an organisation called Audio Solutions that serves both the USA and Canada. Additionally, he presided over the World Presidents Organization (WPO) chapter in Bombay.
Big Basket
Although Hari Menon co-founded several businesses, he is most recognised for being the co-founder of the online grocery store Big Basket.
He also established Symphony Industrial AI and Fabmart, a retail business in India. He graduated from BITS Pilani in 1976.
In addition, Hari held the position of CEO for several businesses, including Tumri, Serus Corporation, and Timeli.
RedBus
RedBus is a company that sells online bus tickets and offers bus seat reservations on its website and mobile apps. Phanindra Sama and Sudhakar Pasupunuri, both graduates of BITS Pilani, founded RedBus in 2006. The two had previously worked together at several businesses.
Redbus was purchased by the goibibo group in 2013.
Zivame
In 2011, Richa Kar established the online lingerie marketplace Zivame. She formerly worked at Spencers Retail and SAP before joining Zivamr. At the moment, Zivame is worth over $100 million, and its web platform has over a million daily visitors.
Belong.co
Belong.co collects the ideal prospects for businesses from hundreds of public and social sources using big data. Vijay Sharma and Sudheendra Chilappagari, both BITS Pilani graduates, founded Belong.co in 2014.
Swiggy
An online store named Bundl was created in 2013 by its two creators, Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, to make courier services and domestic shipping easier. Rahul Jaimini joined them in 2014 when they transitioned Bundl to Swiggy as a meal delivery service.
At the moment, Swiggy is valued at over $3 billion and offers services in more than 300 Indian locations.
Grey Orange
In 2011, Samay Kohli and Akash Gupta established Grey Orange. An international robotics company called GreyOrange develops, produces, and instals cutting-edge robot systems for automation at warehouses, distribution facilities, and fulfilment centres.
Sierra Atlantic
Sierra Atlantic, Inc. offers outsourced product development and offshore corporate applications. The company provides business application implementation, integration, update, and maintenance services as part of its life-cycle application management solutions. In 1993, Raju Reddy started Sierra Atlantic, which was ultimately purchased by Hitachi in 2011 after having operations in more than 12 nations.
Additionally, Raju Reddy serves as the chairperson of BITSAA, the BITS Pilani alumni association. He also oversaw the launch of BITS SPARK by BITSAA. The BITS Pilani Angel Investment Network and its startup mentoring programme, BITS Spark, support BITSian entrepreneurs.
Postman
Millions of developers presently utilise the Postman API development platform, which was co-founded and is led by Abhinav Asthana. Following its series C financing, Postman was recently valued at more than $2 billion.
After graduating from BITS in 2010, Abhinav cofounded TeliportMe, an Android app that has been downloaded more than 5 million times. Later, in 2014, he cofounded Postman.
TapChief
Shashank Murali, Binay Krishna, and Arjun Krishna, all graduates of BITS Pilani, founded Tapchief in 2016. Tapchief transitioned from an online guidance platform to a full-stack platform for the future of work.
Tapchief has raised $650,000 from more than 50 investors this year, including 500 Startups, a SEA-based venture capital firm, Stanford Angels, AngelList India, and SucSEED Venture Partners. They were purchased by Unacademy in 2021 for 100 crores.
HalaPlay
The creators of HalaPlay, Swapnil Saurav, Ananya Singhal, Prateek Anand, and Aman Kesari, launched it in 2017. (all BITS Pilani Alumni).
With leagues from all around the world, HalaPlay has held more than 5,000 fantasy matches in sports including cricket, football, and kabaddi. Nazara Technologies and Delta Corp India have led a Rs 40 crore Series A investment round for HalaPlay.
Map My India
Digital map data, telematics, location-based SaaS, and GIS services are all provided by MapmyIndia. MapmyIndia was created in 1992 by Rakesh Verma, and as of this writing, they had secured approximately $34 million in venture capital funding. In 2015, Flipkart paid around Rs. 1600 crore to buy 34% of the business.
Visit
Visit is a health counsellor driven by AI that matches a patient’s symptoms to the appropriate medical specialist. Anurag Prasad, Vaibhav Singh, Shashvat Tripathi, and Chetan Anand, all graduates of BITS Pilani, formed the company Visit in 2016.
Groww
One of Groww’s co-founders and the business’s CFO is Ishan Bansal. He holds an MBA from XLRI and a BITS Pilani degree.
Mobile Premier League
Shubh Malhotra, a 2009 graduate of BITS Pilani, is one of the co-founders of the Mobile Premier League, also known as MPL. He had previously cofounded CREO, which HIKE had acquired.
Users of the MPL mobile e-sports platform can participate in a variety of skill-based gaming competitions.