India’s overall economy might be in a bit of a slowdown — auto sales are the lowest in years, and several IT companies are laying off employees. But there’s a bright spot in the corporate horizon– in the world of startups.
India is home to 24 unicorns and another 52 are in the pipeline to attain that status. This is brought out in the latest NASSCOM report, titled Indian Tech Startup Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s. Unicorn is a term to describe startups valued at $1 billion or more.
China now has the most unicorns in the world, and is closely followed by the US. India continues to retain its third position globally in terms of number of unicorns. But there are signs that India might soon move up the ranks — its number of potential unicorns in the pipeline is the highest in the world, having more than tripled from 15 last year to 52 in 2019. The report expects that by 2025, the country will have around 95-105 unicorns, enjoying a cumulative valuation of $350-390 billion.
Among the new Indian unicorns were Delhivery, BigBasket, Icertis, Druva, Ola Electric, and Rivigo. Among potential unicorns were software and robotics platform GreyOrange, card processing company Pine Labs, online car marketplace CarDekho, online grocer Grofers, furniture marketplace Urban Ladder, fintech start-up LendingKart and online truck aggregator Blackbuck.
The unicorns and potential unicorns belong to a very broad-based mix of 13 sectors, including FinTech, HealthTech, logistics, retail, education, gaming and agriculture.
Sharing details of the report, NASSCOM President Debjani Ghosh stated that 1,100 startups were added to the ecosystem in 2019. Further, the tech startup ecosystem received funding of $4.4 billion and created 60,000 direct jobs in 2019. She said that access to market and funds continue to remain a challenge for startups.