Forget Silicon Valley: This Delhi school club birthed $100M+ tech giants, says US investor

US-based venture capitalist and Menlo Ventures partner Debarghya Das has spotted a surprising pattern among founders of startups valued at over $100 million. In a recent post on X, Das claimed that many of these successful entrepreneurs share one unexpected link — they were all part of a computer science club in a non-American high school.

"Every single one of these $100M+ companies were started by alumni from a single Computer Science club in a non-American high school. Cartesia, Inception Labs, General Catalyst CVF, Wispr Flow, Affinity, Snapdeal, Sugar, boAt. It's Exun Clain in Delhi Public School, RK Puram in India," Das wrote. 

The impressive list shared by Das includes founders behind companies like Cartesia and Inception Labs, led by Karan Goel and Aditya Grover respectively — both building advanced AI models after IIT Delhi and Stanford stints — alongside Stanford-educated entrepreneurs like Karanveer Mohan of General Catalyst’s CVF fund, Tanay Kothari of Wispr Flow and Shubham Goel of CRM platform Affinity. Other notable alumni include Abhishek Chandra of heart-health startup Recora (Yale), and Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (UPenn/IIT Delhi), Vineeta Singh of Sugar Cosmetics (IIT Madras), and Boat’s Aman Gupta (Delhi University).

The post went viral in no time, with netizens saying this sounds like the startup version of a legendary sports team. 

A user wrote: "That origin story sounds like a startup version of a legendary sports team; one club, many MVPs. Is the secret mentorship or the spark of fierce late night coding sessions? Either way the plot proves talent travels well beyond borders; a single club can seed a global parade. So which alumnus story inspires your next side hustle or couch dream?"

"Amazing, if this nation taps its true potential, there will be many more," a second user said. A third user commented: "So interesting... DPS RKP alums killing it!" 

A fourth user weighed in: "Definitely a great school with immense reputation for being merit-based. Mix that with the fact that large percentage were from high socioeconomic strata, and it creates a set-up for great success!"

"That's wild. No wonder they call themselves the premier tech school club in India," another user said.