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When you think of India’s startup scene, it is easy to picture Stanford or IIT graduates leading the charge. But a recent post on X (formerly Twitter) reminded everyone that one school – Delhi Public School, RK Puram – has been shaping some of the brightest entrepreneurial minds across the globe. Deedy Das, Partner at Menlo Ventures, shared a post on X (formerly Twitter) that got people talking. He wrote, “Every single one of these $100M+ companies were started by alumni from a single Computer Science club in a non-American high school.” The club he was referring to is the Exun Clan, the computer science society of DPS RK Puram. Das listed eight companies – Cartesia, Inception Labs, General Catalyst CVF, Wispr Flow, Affinity, Snapdeal, Sugar Cosmetics and boAt – all founded by former students of the school. “It’s Exun Clan in Delhi Public School, RK Puram in India,” he added. Let’s take a closer look at these founders who have gone from the classrooms of DPS RK Puram to building some of today’s most successful ventures. Old school friends turned co-founders, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal started Snapdeal in 2010. Bahl later studied at the University of Pennsylvania while Bansal attended IIT Delhi. Together, they built one of India’s largest online marketplaces which is now valued at over $1 billion. Before she became a household name through Shark Tank India, Vineeta Singh was a DPS RK Puram student. She co-founded Sugar Cosmetics in 2012 with Kaushik Mukherjee. The brand, valued between $250–500 million, stands out as one of India’s biggest direct-to-consumer beauty companies. Another familiar face from Shark Tank India, Aman Gupta, co-founded boAt in 2016 with Sameer Mehta. The Delhi University graduate has built India’s leading audio and wearable brand which now commands a valuation of over $1 billion. Karan Goel, co-founder of Cartesia, is part of the new generation of AI innovators. After studying at IIT Delhi and Stanford, he launched the company in 2023. Based in Silicon Valley, Cartesia builds cutting-edge AI voice models and has already reached a valuation between $500 million and $1 billion. Aditya Grover’s journey also started at DPS RK Puram before he went on to IIT Delhi and later Stanford. In 2024, he co-founded Inception Labs, a company working on diffusion-based AI models. With a valuation crossing $250 million, it represents India’s growing presence in deep tech innovation. Moving from tech to finance, Karanveer Mohan co-founded General Catalyst CVF in 2020 with Pranav Singhvi. The venture capital firm manages over $1 billion in funds and invests across global sectors. Voice-to-text technology is evolving fast and Tanay Kothari is one of the names leading it. He co-founded Wispr Flow in 2021 which focuses on AI voice dictation tools. The company, valued at over $250 million, highlights Kothari’s focus on building smarter, more human ways to interact with technology. Shubham Goel, who co-founded Affinity in 2017, developed a relationship intelligence platform that helps dealmakers manage business connections. With a valuation between $500 million and $1 billion, Affinity is widely used by venture capital firms and investment banks around the world. Yale graduate Abhishek Chandra founded Recora in 2016, a health-tech company focused on improving heart care. Co-founded with Ed Wu and Vivek Vishwanath, Recora has crossed the $100 million mark in valuation.
