The transition towards a sustainable future is the global goal. The sustainability initiatives of higher education institutions contribute to it by proposing, creating, and capturing values sustainably. The sustainability strategies of these institutions can produce future sustainability leaders, and educate the world about sustainability. An invisible sustainable business model considers people, the planet, and the profit simultaneously. State private universities have a growing role in India’s higher education system. Hence the study analyzes state private universities by treating them as sustainable business models. Resource constraints, implementation challenges, and the lack of policy reforms are the current challenges these universities face while upgrading their sustainability. The study aims to comprehend the sustainability initiatives of the sustainable business models in the Indian higher education system. The study identified the core sustainability areas and listed a few sustainability strategies of the sustainable business models by adopting a secondary data analysis framework.