Presently, India is home to a total of 51 unique unicorns as it had added an average of three unicorns every month over the course of the year said the Hurun Research Institute in a report titles ‘Hurun India Future Unicorn List 2021’. In that report, it was found that India added 25 unicorns to the list in 2021 alone. Unicorns are essentially just start-ups that have achieved a $1 billion valuation and have a founding date that stands after the year 2000.
The Hurun report classified these start-ups as 32 ‘Gazelles’ and 54 ‘Cheetahs’ thanks to their record-breaking stats. It was also found that India’s future unicorns combined are worth around $36 billion which is the equivalent to one-third of the GDP of the city of Delhi at its current price, the report claimed. On the other hand, India’s current unicorns are worth a whopping $168 billion which far exceeds the GDP of Telangana at the current price, said the report.
These startups were evaluated based on their regulatory findings, founders of the start-ups featured in Hurun Future Unicorn List graduated/post-graduated from either IIT Delhi or IIM. It also took feedback from entrepreneurs and a study of India-focused VC funds as well as angel investors.
Anas Rahman Junaid, the MD and Chief Researcher at Hurun India said, “Preparing the Hurun India Future Unicorn List 2021 has been one of the most daunting tasks, primarily due to the positive hyperactivity in Indian start-up ecosystems. For instance, 5 start-ups that we had as Cheetahs at the beginning of our research, jumped straight to Unicorn valuations. The list has inputs from India’s start-up investor ecosystem including some of the top VC funds and hence could serve as a good source for investors and family offices to understand more some of the most exciting start-ups in the country.”
“2021 also registered start-up IPOs, starting with Nazaara Tech, followed by Zomato and others who have filed including Paytm, Freshworks, Nykaa and so on. IPOs present exit opportunities for investors and encourage more Indian High Networth Individuals to allocate a meaningful portion of their investment into start-ups,” added Junaid.
Like the year before, Bengaluru was still the main hub of the startup ecosystem according to the report. It was mentioned that the city has a total of 31 start-ups. This is followed by Delhi NCR with 18 startups and then Mumbai which has 13 to its name. E-commerce, FinTech and SaaS businesses comprise 49 per cent of the Hurun India Future Unicorn List 2021.
He also said, “India is home to more than 600 million internet users and is expected to have 900 million users by 2025. The adoption of internet in rural areas will further compliment the rise of technology start-ups. Fintech companies operating in mobile payments, insurance, blockchain, stock trading and digital lending will grow further to capitalize the internet penetration.”
Top investors in the businesses on the list were titans like Sequoia that had made around 37 investments. Following close in second place was Tiger Global which was behind 18 investments. The most valuable Gazelle was ‘Zilingo’ and the most valuable Cheetah was the online furniture platform, ‘Pepperfry’.
“Although the Indian start-up ecosystem is growing, some of the start-ups, who reach a certain scale migrate from India, in search for better regulatory incentives and risk capital availability. For instance, some of the best Enterprise SaaS companies are born in India but “flipped” to the USA. This is a lost opportunity for India and it is important that these start-ups are incentivised to stay back in the country,” commented Junaid.
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