Two Indian-Origin Entrepreneurs Lead Hottest Startups in The US

Two startups led by Indian-origin entrepreneurs have become the talk of the town in the America's Silicon Valley -- financial trading app Robinhood and voice-led social media app Clubhouse. 

Baiju Bhatt and Rohan Seth, co-founders of Robinhood and Clubhouse, respectively, are both Stanford alumni and in their 30s.

Baiju Bhatt, an Indian-American billionaire entrepreneur of Gujarati descent, spearheaded Robinhood as a co-founder to an $11.7 billion valuation with its latest billion-dollar funding round. While Rohan Seth’s Clubhouse turned unicorn this year within less than a year of founding.

Founded in 2013, by Bhatt along with Vladimir Tenev, Robinhood app offers equity, cryptocurrency, and options trading, as well as cash management accounts. It also provides a stock brokerage platform that democratizes access to the financial markets and aims to make people comfortable storing money and trading stocks using its application.

About Clubhouse App, it is an iPhone app that allows people to host and join audio conversations with other users. It was founded in May 2020 by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth. Elon Musk, Drake, Tiffany Haddish and Mark Zuckerberg have been in Clubhouse rooms, making it the buzziest social media phenomenon of the moment. 

Recently this month, the Clubhouse app got blocked in mainland China, prior to which, Clubhouse attracted quite a number of Chinese netizens to discuss various topics, including politically sensitive topics, such as protests in Hong Kong and the political status of Taiwan.