As per the PitchBook study, IITs were accounted for 77 startup founders who raised VC money, and the most number of founders came from Stanford with 190; UC Berkeley with 160 and University of Pennsylvania with 131.

"The IITs are a proxy for academic capabilities recognized around the world. Talent is the key filter in the IIT structure and the sharpest make the cut. The peer influence of the romance of entrepreneurship has rub-off effects among batch mates," said Rajiv Srivatsa, an IIT-Madras alumnus who co-founded Urban Ladder, an e-shopping portal for furniture.

Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal, an IIT-Delhi alumnus, said he was not surprised by the ranking. "Indians, especially IITians, have always been deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley, both as founders and early employees. The IITs attract the top minds in the country - pushing them to excel among their highly talented peers. The institutes also actively encourage independent thinking - this is especially true of the newer generation of IITians," he added.

Some of the IITians’ Silicon Valley success stories include, Sycamore Networks that had a spectacular IPO in 1999, with its market cap touching $14.4 billion on opening day. The company was founded by IIT-Madras alumnus Gururaj Deshpande, and it is into networking products. More recently, Abheek Anand and fellow IITian Sohan Majumdar sold their mobile-based customer loyalty startup Tagtile to Facebook. It is estimated that around 60,000 IIT alumni currently live in the U.S.

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