Chandragupta Maurya (321-297 BC) 

He was an adventurer rather than a king. Like Alexander, he began with almost no army whatsoever; with this army he seized the region of Magadha just south of the lower Ganges and then steadily conquered the whole of the Ganges basin. Chandragupta Maurya had started his empire. When Alexander the Great departed from Gandhara, a power vacuum was left in western India which Maurya took advantage of. Marching westward, he quickly conquered the whole of the Indus Valley, and eventually gained Gandhara and Arachosia (the mountainous region west of the Indus) after defeating the Greek rulers of Persia and Bactria, the Seleucids.

   Hand in hand with this ambitious conqueror was a shrewd and calculating Brahman named Kautilya. While Chadragupta Maurya built his empire by the force of his arm, Kautilya designed the government. Together they created the first unified state in Indian history. The government Kautilya and Chandragupta created strictly regulated economic activities. The laws were harsh and the death penalty was applied to a myriad of offenses.

Bindusara (297-272 BC)

 Chandragupta's son Bindusara extended the conquests even further by setting his sights south to the Deccan. By the end of Bindusara's reign, the Mauryan Empire included at least a third of the peninsula and stretched all the way from Bangladesh to the Hindu Kush mountains.