India has its own billion-dollar tech-startup club; the Indian Unicorn club, and the strength seems to be growing steadily. Over the weekend, I looked at some of them to see if there are common traits among Indian unicorns to come up with some interesting findings.The Indian Unicorn club currently has a handful of startups in it - Flipkart, Snapdeal, Mu Sigma, InMobi, Paytm, Zomato, Ola. These companies are valued over $1 bn and have grown steadily over the years. At the current pace of funding and valuations, the list will get longer.One thing sticks out: 5 of the 7 companies on the list have founders/co-founders from IITs. Agreed that only some of the best get into an IIT and this shouldn’t be a surprise. But 5 out of 7 is quite a ratio.Their contribution to the economy could be significant over time. Something like what Stanford has been able to do for the American economy. According to a 2012 study companies founded by Stanford’s alumni generate trillions in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs for the American economy.Entrepreneurship and academics have always gone hand in hand. Consider the biggest example of all, the Silicon valley. It is considered the mecca of startups and in the middle of it lies Stanford University.Some of Stanford’s famous alumni and co-founders of of silicon valley companies include Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard of Hewlett Packard; Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim of Sun Microsystems; Reid Hoffman, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Lee and Alan Liu of Linkedin.Similarly in India IITs are known for their emphasis on technical education and with their tough-to-crack admission exams have managed to curate the top students for their courses. This in-turn assures a good pedigree of competitive thoroughbreds exiting the school every year.This does not mean that other colleges in the country do not produce good entrepreneurs. The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) is an example of a private varsity which has produced a phenomenal number of entrepreneurs. Some of the good startups founded by BITS alumni include redBus, Exotel, Zivame and Grey Orange Robotics.Academics alone might not do the work. Establishing a support system for entrepreneurs and startups through incubation programs and alumni networks is very essential.One such good example is the Entrepreneurship Cells (E-cell) and Technology Business Incubator programs at the various IITs across the country. Most of these incubation center also have fund to support entrepreneurs and start-ups.Some of the IITs have already introduced , or are in the process of introducing, courses on entrepreneurship. IIT-Kharagpur for instance is considering a small course in engineering entrepreneurship for its BTech students.IITs also have a well connected alumni network, a key factor that helps entrepreneurs starting up.When it comes to funding, traditionally VCs and investors have had a bias toward companies founded by IITians. This can be attributed to the fact that IITians have had a strong track record as sound professionals in the tech-industry and a startup with an IITian at the helm is bound to bring in some sort of success.In the past many VC and firms have also been vocal about the fact that academic pedigree of the founding team is an important criteria that is looked up before investing in a startup. With IITians belonging to one of the premiere technological institutions in the country odds are in their favour.