Vaibhav Gupta
🇮🇳India· Mumbai
One half of Team Guava — the IIT Delhi pair who beat 40,000 teams to the Bahamas and walked back with $100K split between them.
The 2023 IQC final ran in the Bahamas — twelve teams flown in from Canada, China, Hungary, India, Malaysia, the UK, the US, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan and Vietnam. Team Guava — Vaibhav Gupta and Nihar Patel, both undergrads at IIT Delhi — won. The pair had cleared 30,000-plus contestants from 100+ countries in earlier stages, and the prize was over $100,000 cash split between the two. Vaibhav was studying Chemical Engineering as a major with a minor in Computer Science, an unusual quant pipeline; Nihar was on the more conventional Mathematics and Computing track.
Vaibhav's approach to building alphas is deceptively simple: start with intuition, then validate through data. He does not start with the math — he starts with a hunch about how markets behave, then builds the model around it. "Alphas are hidden inside data," he said in his WorldQuant spotlight interview. "By utilizing diverse fields, datasets, and implementing unique ideas, I can seek to generate high-quality signals." That instinct — forming a hypothesis before touching a formula — may be exactly what a Chemical Engineering background trains you to do. Systems thinking. First principles.
After winning, Vaibhav took a different path from most IQC champions. Rather than going straight into a WorldQuant internship, he joined the BRAIN Consultancy Program, staying connected to the platform while continuing to build and research independently. Today he is a full-time Quantitative Researcher at WorldQuant. He chose depth over speed. Research over title. The IQC has grown from 30,000 participants in 2023 to 156,000 in 2026 — and Vaibhav Gupta's win is proof that the path is open to engineers, not just mathematicians.
Today he works as a full-time Quantitative Researcher at WorldQuant's Mumbai office
Vitalii Kaminskyi · June 2026 · WorldQuant IQC 2023 Finalist Spotlight
You came into quant from Chemical Engineering. What made you choose that path, and when did you first encounter the IQC?
"Deciding to participate in the IQC was one of the best decisions I ever made. It has accelerated my learning, boosted my confidence, and provided an invaluable experience."
Vaibhav first heard about the IQC when the WorldQuant BRAIN team visited IIT Delhi campus for an introductory session. That was the starting gun. Nine months later he was standing on a stage in the Bahamas as champion.
How do you approach building alphas?
"Alphas are hidden inside data. By utilizing diverse fields, datasets, and implementing unique ideas, I can seek to generate high-quality signals."
He does not start with the math. He starts with a hunch about how markets behave, then builds the model around it. Forming a hypothesis before touching a formula — that may be exactly what a Chemical Engineering background trains you to do. Systems thinking. First principles. The ability to model complex behavior with limited information.
What did winning the IQC mean to you personally?
"Being recognized by esteemed individuals, whom I have always aspired to emulate, feels truly special."
He attended the WorldQuant Global Summit in the Bahamas. Met the people who run one of the world's most secretive quantitative asset management firms. Learned more in nine months of competition than he says he would have in years of conventional study.
What is the hardest lesson you have taken from this work?
"I have learned to stick to the basics and understand the fine line between complexity and unnecessary complication."
What is next?
"We have only scratched the surface."