While physicist Dr. Narinder Singh Kapany first proved an Indian immigrant could take a tech company public in 1967, the modern era of venture-backed Indian tech giants took off in the 1980s. Vinod Khosla’s co-founding of Sun Microsystems and Kanwal Rekhi’s co-founding of Excelan, Indian engineers in Silicon Valley demonstrated that immigrants could build and successfully exit venture-backed companies. Entrepreneurs including Suhas Patil, Sanjay Mehrotra, Jay Chaudhry, Aneel Bhusri, and Apoorva Mehta secured backing from top-tier venture capital firms and built major technology companies. Their success opened doors for future generations of immigrant entrepreneurs and helped normalize Indian-origin leadership in the startup ecosystem. Today, Indian-origin founders lead approximately 11 percent of U.S. unicorns, reflecting a transformation they helped set in motion.
