Bengaluru: Fourty four of America’s 87 unicorns, start-ups valued at more than $1 billion, were founded or co-founded by immigrants, with Indian entrepreneurs leading the list at 11, according to a study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), a non-partisan public policy research organization, which focuses on trade, immigration, and related issues.

The findings were first published in The Wall Street Journal.

NFAP based the research on data from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureSource.

As debates around immigration laws are heating up in the run-up to the US elections, the study aimed to highlight the importance of immigrants in creating and nurturing the tech economy in the US, and argued for the relaxation of immigration laws.

Interestingly, of the 14 Indian founders and co-founders on the list, seven of them went to the US as international students.

Some of the other immigrants who went on to start notable companies include SpaceX founder Elon Musk (South Africa), Slack founder Stewart Butterfield (Canada), Serguei Mourachov (Russia), Cal Henderson (UK), and Palantir Technologies founder Peter Thiel (Germany).

The study found that immigrants were key members of management or product development teams in 62 of the 87 unicorn start-ups.

Also, although Mu Sigma, which appears on the list, is registered in the US and is mentioned as creating about 3,500 jobs, around 80% of its employees are based in its Bengaluru centre.

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