Goemkarponn desk
VASCO: BITS Goa University proudly announces that eight young BITS Pilani students/ alumni have featured in the recently released ‘Forbes 30 under 30 – Asia 2022’ list. Of these, five students/ alumni are from K K Birla Goa Campus.
After the release of the list, Prof. Suman Kundu, Director, BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus, invited and felicitated co-founders of Bluelearn, Harish Uthayakumar and Shreyans Sancheti (2018-2022 batch students of Goa Campus), who have featured in this list. Harish and Shreyans were pleased and felt that Prof. Kundu’s views on the growth of the startup ecosystem and empowering student builders are incredible. They believe that this will lead to more founders coming out of the Goa Campus. Prof. Veeky Baths, Associate Dean, Alumni Relations, was also present during this felicitation meeting.
Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2022 list released on 27th May 2022 highlights Young Entrepreneurs and Rising Stars redefining the future of business and society in Asia and inspiring change and driving innovation in their respective fields amid the challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
A common theme in all these following startups is that they started their venture while being on campus and invested in by BITS Alumni Angels.
Malhar Patil, Rajat Gupta, and Shourya Agarwal (all K. K. Birla Goa Campus alumni) are the founders of Flam App. They have raised $3.5 million recently, and their current valuation is in the range of $50-$75 million.
Harish Uthayakumar and Shreyans Sancheti (both K. K. Birla Goa Campus students and soon to be alumni in 2022) are the founders of Bluelearn. They have raised a pre-seed round of $500,000 recently, and their current valuation is in the range of $4-$6 million.
Ahmed Faraaz, Harshit Awasthi, and Sashakt Tripathi (all Pilani campus students and soon to be alumni in 2022) are the founders of Kalam Labs, a Y-Combinator backed venture. They have raised a pre-seed round of $450,000 and an undisclosed sum in the seed round recently, and their current valuation is in the range of $10-$14 million.
Other inclusions:
Health Care and Sciences Category
Prasanna Date, Research Scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The date is developing novel quantum machine learning techniques that are faster than current technology. His work seeks to enable faster and more effective data analysis in scientific and consumer applications such as high-energy physics and self-driving cars.
Finance & Venture Capital
Sajal Khanna co-founded Akudo along with Lavika Aggarwal and Jagveer Gandhi (over 30) of IITR in 2020. The digital bank offers prepaid debit cards for teenagers while helping them to manage their expenses and save money. Akudo, whose name means “peaceful wealth” in Nigeria’s Igbo language, has already raised $4.2 million in seed funding led by Y-Combinator.
