One school in India has given birth to a surprising number of cool startups

What does customer engagement software maker Capillary Technologies have in common with math app Splashmath, used vehicles marketplace GoZoomo, logistics provider Roadrunnr, and online product and price discovery startup BuyHatke?

Well, all of them are technology startups doing well in their playing fields, scaling up fast, raising money, and growing user bases or clientele. That apart, the founders of these successful startups are alumni of the same engineering college – Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT-KGP).

The initial sparks of entrepreneurship lit up inside these founders when they were students at IIT-KGP, toying with tech ideas, and building enduring friendships. Capillary, for instance, has an all-IIT-KGP founding team. So does Splashmath and BuyHatke. GoZoomo and RoadRunnr each have one founder from the prestigious institution. Venturesity, Traveltriangle, Signeasy, Innovacer, Carbon Clean Solutions, Moengage, Mapmygenome, Stayglad … the list of cool startups that can trace their origins back to IIT-KGP grows ever longer.

“What really got the entrepreneurship buzz going was the success of seniors we had seen closely. Specifically, three startups which emerged during 2008 to 2012 made a lot of KGPians [the alumni of IIT-KGP call themselves this] curious: Capillary, Splashmath, and Minekey. Their success inspired a lot of people,” Arnav Kumar, co-founder of Gozoomo tells Tech in Asia.

IIT-KGP has a 2,100-acre campus. The town outside the campus doesn’t have much to offer the student community. Naturally, this binds them closer. The institute is also the largest in terms of student intake. “More hands, more ideas, more aggregate grey matter,” Arnav says.

He points out that IIT-KGP offers a lot of disciplines that most other IITs don’t:­ agricultural engineering, medical sciences, architecture, energy, economics, and so on, besides the usual engineering courses. “This bodes well for KGP since some of the most exciting innovations are interdisciplinary in nature – think IoT, wearables, medical technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and so on,” he says. Many of Gozoomo’s early team members are KGPians.

Student-run entrepreneurship cell

The founding team of IIT Kharagpur’s entrepreneurial cell

IIT-KGP was one of the first colleges in India to have an entrepreneurship cell. It was established to encourage as well as support students who dream of founding a startup, and it’s entirely student-run. So far, in the eight years since the cell’s inception, it has incubated 50 student startups.

“It was the brainchild of Aneesh Reddy and K.K. Mehra, co-founders of Capillary. The cell was started to inculcate entrepreneurial thinking among students and take some of the ideas in the campus and showcase them to the world. So we wanted to become the bridge,” Subhendu Panigrahi, co-founder of hiring startup Venturesity, tells Tech in Asia. Subhendu was one of the founding members of the cell.

“It took time to inspire the student community to startup instead of taking cushy jobs,” he recalls.

Empresario: Everything begins with an idea