YC targets Indian students

Y Combinator is moving deeper into India’s campuses as it looks for founders earlier, including students and recent dropouts. (ycombinator.com) The accelerator will hold its first Startup School India in Bengaluru on April 18, and Y Combinator says the event will bring together 2,000 selected founders, engineers, and builders. General partner Ankit Gupta is scheduled to attend with partners Jared Friedman and Jon Xu. (ycombinator.com) (economictimes.indiatimes.com) Gupta told The Economic Times that Y Combinator will visit Indian Institute of Technology Delhi this week and run a program there as part of a broader push into colleges and universities. He said the firm is increasingly funding people “right out of college, or even dropouts.” (economictimes.indiatimes.com) Startup School began in 2017 as a free Y Combinator program for aspiring founders, and the India edition shifts that outreach into an in-person format. The Bengaluru event is free, but attendance is selective and application-based. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) (ycombinator.com) The India push comes as Y Combinator still has a sizable footprint in the country: its directory currently lists 156 startups headquartered in India. That public count excludes some companies founded by Indians but based elsewhere, so the broader network is larger than the directory page suggests. (ycombinator.com) Y Combinator’s India roster includes companies such as Razorpay, Meesho, Groww, Zepto, and ClearTax, and founders from several of those companies are slated to speak in Bengaluru. The Economic Times reported Harshil Mathur, Vidit Aatrey, Aadit Palicha, Lalit Keshre, and Mukund Jha among the speakers. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) Gupta also tied the campus push to changes in startup formation, especially in artificial intelligence, where small teams can build products faster than before. In the same interview, he said seed capital in artificial intelligence is not reaching enough smaller startups while large companies attract a disproportionate share. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) For Y Combinator, the next checkpoint is April 18 in Bengaluru. For Indian students, the pitch is direct: apply early, build early, and get in front of Silicon Valley’s best-known startup accelerator without leaving campus first. (ycombinator.com) (economictimes.indiatimes.com)