The IITs are the fourth largest producer of unicorn startups in the world

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur or a wantrepreneur equipped with a dream to create a billion-dollar business in India, one of the IITs is your best bet.

Unicorns are startups with more than a billion-dollar valuation and the IITs have produced 12 unicorns.

Sage, a UK-based accounting, and payroll company stated this in a research and reinstated the belief that the premier institution is still numero uno for attaining success.

In terms of countries that are home to the most number of unicorns, US tops the list with 144 unicorns, followed by China with 47. India grabbed the third spot with 10.

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In the study that lists universities that have produced the most unicorn founders, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) bagged the fourth spot.

US-based Stanford University claimed the top rank with 51 unicorn founders, followed by Harvard University with 37.

The University of California came third with 18 unicorn founders and IIT followed with 12 founders.

India is home to 10 unicorn companies from e-commerce giants Flipkart, Snapdeal and ShopClues to cab aggregator Ola, restaurant aggregator Zomato, classified ads platform Quickr, digital payments company Paytm, mobile ad tech player InMobi, messaging app Hike and analytics company Mu Sigma.

Within the various IITs, it is Delhi that produced the maximum unicorn founders. Sachin and Binny Bansal of Flipkart, Sanjay Sethi of ShopClues, Zomato founders Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, Snapdeal's Rohit Bansal and Quikr's Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas (now founder of Webbutterjam Digital) are all products of IIT Delhi.

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Ola's founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati went to IIT Bombay.

Inmobi's founders Naveen Tiwari, Abhay Singhal and Amit Gupta studied at IIT Kanpur while their co-founder Mohit Saxena went to IIT Roorkee.

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According to the study, for over 60% of the founders all over the world, the current unicorn company was the only company they had ever built. However, indicating that experience literally pays, the research said those who founded more than one company have, on average, a 34.5% higher valuation than those who founded just one company ($4.29bn vs $5.88bn).