Indians Who Do Their Undergrads in the US

Anmol and Anshul’s recent viral post on “BARBIEs” (Bachelors Abroad Returning to Build in the Indian Ecosystem) pointed out that Indians who do their undergrads abroad and return to India start unicorn companies at very high rates. Unsurprisingly, many read their post and said what the OPs said themselves: “Yes, it’s cause they’re rich and privileged!” This is a common belief in India, who think US undergrads are just the “dumb rich kids who could pay for it.” It isn’t meritless: US undergrad programs cost ~$250k for 4 years (~2.2cr).

But as someone who did my undergrad in the US and seen 10-15 batches of this, I think it’s more nuanced.

What Do They Do?

This group largely splits into 3 categories, split ~evenly. The behaviors in each category are quite similar too:

1) Ultra rich from family business [$10M+]: Majority study econ/finance or the discipline of their family business. Professional opportunities in America are uninteresting. They might stay for an MBA, but usually go back to India to work for family and/or start a business.

2) Rich from professional class [$1-10M]: Parents are execs in tech, lawyers, finance, or doctors. Majority study CS/Engineering. Many study their parents’ profession. Likely to stay in the US to work. Some start companies later on, usually in tech.

3) Not rich [<$1M]: Came on financial aid. Most study CS/Engg or basic Science/Math. Often gets PhD to become professors. Usually stay in the US to work. Less likely than (2) to start company, but when they do it’s glorious.

Children of other celebrities, politicians and civil servants fall between 1) and 2).

What Companies Do They Start?

The generalizations above are changing.

Today more than ever, these students want to be entrepreneurs in India. They view the US immigration system and job market as a steep hill to climb with no clear reward at the end: “Is being an L5 engineer at Google or a VP at Goldman really that compelling?” Students from the best undergrad programs like Stanford/MIT consistently say “I just can’t see myself solving for these un-relatable first world problems; there’s so much more to build in India!”

They grew up in an era where Social Network and entrepreneurship really penetrated the cultural zeitgeist. Shark Tank India made “founding” mainstream. Y Combinator started funding more startups in India. And then when Zepto happened, they thought “Age is no bar. This could be me” - a sentiment that I’d rarely heard 10 years ago. And now, the IPO markets look better in India too.

The type of companies the entrepreneurs want to start decide where they choose to settle, and in some cases vice-versa. If in America, it’s tech-forward businesses (TIBCO, SanDisk, Hotmail and recently Clubhouse, Affinity, Wispr) and in India, it’s consumer businesses (Flipkart, Zepto, Lenskart, Dream11). I also tweeted about founders of $100M+ companies just from one Indian high school, half of whom did their undergrad abroad¹.

Who Are These People Really?

This is a small group. The number of students per year has gone up from ~4,200/yr in 2015 to ~9,500/yr in 2025, growing at ~8% annually². It’s still ~7-10x less annual volume than Indian Masters students.

A bulk of these students come from ~25 odd English medium schools in the top metros of India like Delhi (DPS RKP, Shriram, Sanskriti, Modern, VV), Bombay (Cathedral, Ambani, Jamnabai), Bangalore (TISB, Mallya Aditi, Bishop Cottons), Hyderabad (HPS), Calcutta (La Martiniere, St Xaviers, Don Bosco) or elite boarding schools (Doon, Mayo, Lawrence, Welham, Woodstock) and international schools.

These are usually people who grew up speaking English as a first language, listening to English music and watching English movies. They usually assimilate quite quickly to American culture. Despite the categorizations above, most of them, even (3) are “rich” by most Indian standards. They’ve travelled abroad. They’ve read many books.

This relatively small group has been a disproportionately impactful bunch. I can’t name them all but they include actors (Ranveer Singh, Abhishek Bachchan), athletes (Abhinav Bindra), journalists (Fareed Zakaria), authors (Siddhartha Mukherjee) and execs (Thomas and George Kurian, Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi of SPC, Vikram Pandit).

I don’t mean to shower accolades on this group, just shine some light on a rather niche group.