Coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee in 2013, Unicorn’s term implies a privately owned startup having a valuation of over 1Billion dollars. Lee was the founder of CowboyVC, a seed-stage venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, California. The term unicorn was used as the mythical animal represented the statistical rarity of such successful ventures.
In her article, Aileen Lee first wrote about unicorns in the venture capital world, “Welcome to the Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups.” She looked at software startups found in the 2000s and predicted that only 0.07% could ever reach $1B valuations. According to CB Insights, there were 483 unicorns as of July 2020. Today the Indian startup ecosystem boasts more than 31 unicorns, with consumer service startups leading the charts, among those 483 unicorns at the moment.
The Unicorn Startup Landscape In India
Back in the 2000s, the rate of startup growth in India to become unicorn startups was low. But now, the rate has shot over to 353.1%, as per the Pitchbook’s latest research.
According to Inc42 DataLabs, 2018 was a bumper year for Indian startups which saw 10 unicorns. Before, 2015 India’s nascent startup ecosystem had less than 10 unicorns. But, For the first time, the ecosystem crossed the double-digit mark in a financial year. It was a great achievement since the last success was in 2014, with the launch of just four unicorns in a year.
With more than 8,900 startups and over 31 unicorns, India continues to be the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. Slow to pick up the pace, yet India is home to the most innovative startups across diverse domains ranging from health-tech to fin-tech and eCommerce to hospitality.
In the last decade, Indian startups had been revolutionizing various sectors and gearing the platform for the upcoming generation of unicorns. It is worth knowing some of the most innovative unicorn startups in India. So let’s proceed with them.
Ecommerce Unicorn startups in India
The eCommerce sector is one of the most crucial in the Indian market since many other sectors have relied upon the eCommerce sector for their establishment. Over 21 deals in 2019, eCommerce companies raised $381 as per the analysis by DataLabs by Inc42. The following unicorn startups in India come under this sector:
Flipkart
- Foundation Year: 2007
- Founders: Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal
- CEO: Kalyan Krishnamurthy
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $7.3M
- Valuation: $22.0B
- Key Investors: SoftBank, Microsoft, Tencent, eBay, Steadview Capital, DST Global, Accel Partners, Naspers, Tiger Global Management, etc
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2012
- Business: Online store for Mobiles, Fashion (Clothes/Shoes), Electronics, Home Appliances, Books, Home, Furniture, Grocery, Jewelry, Sporting goods.
Flipkart keeps on growing its essence in India as this startup saw its incomes take off to ₹ 43,615 crores in FY19, developing by 42% from the past monetary. In 2018, US-based retail behemoth Walmart obtained Flipkart in a gigantic $16B arrangement which shook the Indian startup biological system. However, this arrangement gave enormously productive ways out to both the originators and a few different speculators.
Related – Amazon and Flipkart: The Battle of The eCommerce Giants In India
Snapdeal
- Foundation Year: 2010
- Founders: Kunal Bahl (CEO), and Rohit Bansal
- Headquarters: Delhi-NCR
- Total Funding: $1.8B
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: SoftBank, Kalaari Capital, Foxconn Tech, Blackrock, RuNet Holdings, Alibaba, etc
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2014
- Business- E-commerce Online shopping site
Snapdeal was among one of the primary new businesses that were established from the get-go in the most recent decade and raged its approach to turn into a unicorn. While Snapdeal had a strong beginning during its initial years, it lost its predominance as developing internet business players like Flipkart and Amazon began to control the Indian eCommerce showcase. As Snapdeal saw its misfortunes soar 75% to ₹5,142 crores during FY17, there were various news reports discussing the passing of this unicorn. Post a lamentable execution during FY17, Snapdeal figured out how to slice its misfortunes essentially to ₹613 crores in FY18 and further down to ₹186 crores in FY19.
Paytm Mall
- Foundation Year: 2016
- Founder: Vijay Shekhar Sharma
- Headquarters: At Delhi-NCR
- Total Funding: $ 645M
- Valuation: $2.9B
- Key Investors: Softbank and Alibaba
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: Online Shopping of Mobile Phones, Electronics, Home Decor, Bags, Shoes & Clothing.
According to Paytm Mall’s annual financial statements, the operating revenue recorded a 20% increase to Rs 892.77 crore in FY19 from Rs 744.15 crore in the preceding fiscal. Around 86% of total revenue ~ Rs 767 crore ~ has come from providing marketing and payment gateway services to sellers.
Lenskart
- Foundation Year: 2010
- Founders: Peyush Bansal (CEO), Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi
- Headquarters: Faridabad, Delhi NCR
- Total Funding: $ 1.8B
- Valuation- $ 1.5B
- Key Investors: SoftBank Corp, Kedaara Capital, TPG, Chiratae Ventures, TR Capita, Epiq Capital
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Eyewear online shopping store
Developing its incomes for three back to back fiscal years, Lenskart posted ₹486 crores in FY19 from ₹310 crores in FY18. Moreover, this eyewear unicorn startup in India surprisingly decreased its misfortunes from ₹118 crores in FY18 to ₹28 crores in FY19.
Nykaa
- Foundation Year: 2012
- Founder: Falguni Nayar (CEO)
- Headquarters: Mumbai
- Total Funding: $13M
- Valuation: $1.2B
- Key Investors: Hero Enterprises Chairman Sunil Kant Munjal, Marico Chairman Harsh Mariwala
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: E-commerce cosmetics & beauty products
The brand name Nykaa is derived from the Sanskrit word nayaka, meaning ‘one in the spotlight.’ Nykaa reported a revenue of approximately 157M U.S. dollars. This was an increase of almost 80 percent compared to the 2018 fiscal year.
Udaan
- Foundation Year: 2016
- Founders: Sujeet Kumar, Vaibhav Gupta, and Amod Malviya
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $ 285M
- Valuation: $2.3B
- Key Investors: DST Global, Yuri Milner, and Lightspeed Venture Partners
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: B2B trading platform
Udaan has over 150,000 purchasers and dealers, all over the nation. In November 2016, Udaan first brought $10M up in Arrangement A round from Lightspeed Venture Partners. With a series C financing of $225M from DST Worldwide and Lightspeed Venture Partners in September 2018, Udaan joined the pined for unicorn club in India with a valuation of $1B.
Shopclues
- Foundation Year: 2011
- Founders: Radhika Aggarwal, and Sanjay Sethi(CEO)
- Headquarters: At Delhi NCR
- Total Funding: $ 255M
- Valuation: $1.1B
- Key Investors: Helion Venture Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners, Tiger Global
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2016
- Online marketplace for home décor and furnishings, kitchen appliances, health, and sports products.
Internet business commercial center ShopClues has seen a bounce of 46% in incomes for the money related the year 2017-18 at Rs 273 crore. The organization also chop down misfortunes essentially by 40% to Rs 208 crore during the fiscal. This eCommerce startup in India had seen a level of development in total revenue rising just by 5% to Rs 188 crore in FY17. The organization’s misfortunes had declined barely by 13% to Rs 332 crore during FY17.
Consumer Services Unicorn Startups in India:
Consumer services refer to startups in hyperlocal, clothing, and food delivery space. This is one of the renowned and contributing sectors of the Indian startup ecosystem. Dating back to 2019, consumer services startups raised a wholesome $176 overall with 33% of deals coming in the FMCG startups. Below listed are the unicorn startups in India of this sector:
Quikr
- Year of the launch: 2008
- Founders: Jiby Thomas and Pranay Chulet (CEO)
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $430M
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: Kinnevik AB, Tiger Global Management, Brand Capital, NGP Capital, Warburg Pincus.
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2015
- Business- Classified advertising operating across businesses like C2C, Cars, Education, Homes, and Services.
Quikr managed to double its operational revenues from ₹88 crores in FY17 to ₹173 crores in FY18, while reducing its losses from ₹324 crores to ₹233 crores during the FY18. Till date, it has acquired 15 organizations, the top ones being GoZefo, CommonFloor, Grabhouse, Salosa.
Zomato
- Foundation Year: 2008
- Founders: Deepinder Goyal(CEO) and Pankaj Chaddah
- Headquarters: Delhi-NCR
- Total Funding: $775M
- Valuation: $2.5B
- Key Investors: Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, InfoEdge, Ant Financial, Vy Capital
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2015
- Business: Restaurant aggregator and food delivery
Zomato achieved a 40% revenue growth to touch ₹466 crores while reducing losses in FY18 by 73% to ₹106 crores. Additionally, Zomato saw its revenues nearly triple to INR 1,397 crores during FY19. However, Zomato’s losses reached INR 1,001 crores in FY19.
Swiggy
- Foundation Year: 2014
- Founders: Nandan Reddy, Rahul Jaimini and Sriharsha Majety (CEO)
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $1.27M
- Valuation:$3.3B
- Key Investors: DST Global, Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Hillhouse Capital Group, Wellington Management, Coatue Management, Meituan-Dianping, Accel, SAIF Partners, and Naspers.
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: Online food ordering and delivery
This food tech giant just took half a decade to grow its food delivery network from Bengaluru to over 500 cities across India. As Swiggy continues its momentous growth, it also saw its losses pile up from ₹397 crores in FY18 to reach ₹2,363 crores in FY19.
BigBasket
- Foundation Year: 2011
- Founders: Abhinay Choudhari, Hari Menon (CEO), Vipul Parekh, and VS Sudhakar
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $1.02M
- Valuation: $1.2B
- Key Investors: Alibaba Group, Paytm Mall, Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, LionRock Capital, Abraaj Group, and Helion Venture Partners.
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Online megastore for daily needs
BigBasket is the first Unicorn startup in India in the online grocery delivery space. During FY19, BigBasket’s revenue increased by 69% to reach ₹2,380 crores while its losses reached ₹348 crores.
Hike
- Foundation Year: 2012
- Founder: Kavin Bharti Mittal (CEO)
- Headquarters: At Delhi-NCR
- Total Funding: $261M
- Valuation: $1.4B
- Key Investors: Bharti SoftBank, Foxconn Technology Group, Tiger Global Management, Tencent Holdings
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2016
- Business: Freeware, messaging, and voice over IP
In the wake of turning into a moment hit, right now informing startups has neglected to dazzle its speculators much since its Billion-dollar valuation. While it produced ₹50 lakh in operational incomes during FY18, it fell further to just ₹3.5 lakh toward the finish of FY19. Moving endlessly from plain texting, Hike shifted to Hike Sticker Chat in April 2019 meaning to give a customized visiting experience to Indians.
Info Edge
- Foundation Year: 1995
- Founder: Sanjeev Bikhchandani
- CEO: Hitesh Oberoi
- Headquarters: Delhi-NCR
- Funding: $8.7M
- Valuation: $2.6B
- Key Investors: Bulbul
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2014
- Business: Indian internet company
InfoEdge got a 16% YoY increase in consolidated total income to Rs 357.7 crores, but consolidated net losses also increased by 174% YoY to Rs 111.8 crore. Billings increased 15.3% YoY to Rs 300.5 crore.
Also Read – List of 15 Successful Indian entrepreneurs
Enterprise Tech Unicorn Startups in India
Enterprise tech startups refer to the startups working in SaaS and ERP solutions for companies. While Zoho and Freshworks top the SaaS scenario currently, the new unicorns include Druva and Icertis. Following unicorn startups in India come under this sector:
Zoho
- Foundation Year: 1996
- Founder: Sridhar Vembu
- Headquarters: Chennai
- Total Funding: By Bootstrapped
- Valuation: $1.6B
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Web-based business tools and information technology
With more than 9100 workers, Zoho had recorded a 37.1% development in working income to Rs 3,308 crore in FY19 from Rs 2,412 crore in FY18. For the absolute first time, Zoho has made an income of Rs 121.07 crore from India while the fare of administrations remained at Rs 3,187 crore during FY19.
Postman
- Foundation Year: 2014
- Founders: Abhinav Asthana(CEO), Abhijit Kane, Ankit Sobti
- Headquarters: San Francisco
- Total Funding: $ 207M
- Valuation: $ 2B
- Key Investors: Nexus Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Insight Venture Partners
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2020
- Business: SaaS – API Development & Testing
In 2019, Postman had brought $50M up in another round to estimate its business. The Series B for the startup, which started its excursion in India, was driven by CRV and included cooperation from existing financial specialist Nexus Adventure Accomplices.
Freshworks
- Foundation Year: 2010
- Founders: Girish Mathrubootham(CEO), and Shan Krishnasamy
- Headquarters: Chennai
- Total Funding: $ 249M
- Valuation: $1.5B
- Key Investors: Accel, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital India, and CapitalG
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: cloud software, Enterprise software, SaaS – CRM
With a customer base of more than 35,000 paying, Freshworks has continued to deliver top-quality enterprise service to its customers. With its robust growth, reports suggest that Freshworks might go public and raise its IPO in two years.
Mu Sigma
- Foundation Year: 2004
- Founder: Dhiraj Rajaram(CEO)
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $ 211M
- Valuation: $1.5B
- Key Investors: Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and MasterCard
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2013
- Business: Data analytics and management consulting
Mu Sigma’s name is derived from the statistical terms “Mu (μ)” and “Sigma (σ)” which denotes the mean and the standard deviation from a probability distribution. In 2012, 2011 and 2010, Mu Sigma was ranked 907, 386, 204 respectively on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies.
Icertis
- Foundation Year: 2009
- Founders: Samir Bodas(CEO), and Monish Darda
- Headquarters: Pune
- Total Funding: $ 115M
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: Greycroft, PremjiInvest, Eight Roads, B Capital Group and Ignition Partners
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Cloud-based Contract management software
With a client base spread over various divisions in 90 nations, a portion of Icertis’ prominent customers incorporate Adobe, Airbus, Airtel, Mindful, Daimler, Microsoft, and Johnson and Johnson. In 2020, Icertis brought $115M up in a round driven by Greycroft and PremjiInvest that forced it to be India’s third SaaS unicorn.
Druva
- Foundation Year: 2008
- Founders: Jaspreet Singh(CEO), Milind Borate, and Ramani Kothandaraman
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $ 328M
- Valuation: $1.0
- Key Investors: Viking Global Investors, Tenaya Capital, Riverwood Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Cloud-based data protection, Data Management
From expanding its product offering to opening headquarters in the US, Druva has steadily expanded its presence worldwide. In 2010, Druva initially raised $5M in Series A funding from Indian Angel Network and Sequoia Capital. In 2019, Druva surpassed $100M in recurring annual revenue.
HealthTech Unicorn Startups in India
Traxcn data, in 2018, revealed that India’s investments in health tech shot up to a striking $ 571M. In 2019, NASSCOM collaborated with GE Healthcare to encourage startups to support digital healthcare solutions in the region. By 2022,it is expected that the healthcare market might have a worth of $ 370B, generating yields up to 35-40 percent. There are 3,230 startups in India focusing on health-tech, out of which 1 has entered the unicorn club of India. Following unicorn startup in India comes under this sector.
CitiusTech
- Foundation Year: 2005
- Founders: Rizwan Koita (CEO)
- Headquarters: Mumbai/Princeton
- Total Funding: $ 100M
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: General Atlantic, Baring Asia
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Healthcare technology services
In 2019, CitiusTech Won the Innovators Award for the Best Value-Based Care Solution. Also, CitiusTech BI-Clinical Platform Achieved the NCQA Certification for covering All HEDIS Measures in 2018
Adtech Unicorn Startups in India
With mobile advertising blooming by a considerable margin in the Indian market, adtech startups provide marketers and businesses the right analytics and digital tools for optimizing digital ads. Let’s take a look at these unicorn startups in India.
InMobi
- Founded: 2007
- Founder: Naveen Tewari(CEO), Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta, Abhay Singhal
- Headquarters: Bangalore
- Total Funding: $ 320M
- Valuation- $1.0B
- Key Investors: SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, Sherpalo Ventures
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2014
- Business- Enterprise platforms for marketers
InMobi at first propelled as an SMS-based pursuit and adaptation business called mKhoj. It later rotated to the mobile advertising platform and rebranded itself as InMobi. To date, InMobi has gained nine organizations including its most recent procurement of the vernacular online networking stage Roposo in November 2019.
Fintech Unicorn Startups in India
Fintech has emerged as the most funded and promising sector in Q3 2019, with around 22% contribution to the total funding amount. Fintech has seen an exponential rise with 36 funding deals and investment of $688 M. Here’s a list of the fintech unicorn startups in India:
Pine Labs
- Foundation Year: 1998
- Founder: Lokvir Kapoor(CEO), Rajul Garg, Tarun Upaday
- Headquarters: Noida
- Total Funding: $ 2.5M
- Valuation: 1.5B
- Key Investors: Sequoia Capital India, New Atlantic Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Temasek, Mastercard
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2020
- Business: Payments, a retail payments startup offerings last-mile transaction technology to merchants through a cloud-based unified POS platform.
With 100,000 merchants and over 100 brand partners, Pine Labs has scattered its presence across more than 3,700 cities in India and Asia. During FY18, Pine Labs garnered ₹302 crores in standalone revenue which increased by 55% from ₹195 crores in FY17.
PhonePe
- Foundation Year: 2015
- Founders: Burzin Engineer, Rahul Chari, and Sameer Nigam(CEO)
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $ 291M
- Valuation: $7B
- Key Investor: Flipkart
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: Cashless Payment app
Blooming up in a couple of years, PhonePe has currently over 200M users and has partnered with Ola, Swiggy, Goibibo . In January 2020, PhonePe became the first digital payment platform in India to launch international travel insurance. Best Digital Wallet, SuperStarUp Asia Award, UPI Digital Innovation Award are some of its achievements since 2015.
Policy Bazaar
- Foundation Year: 2008
- Founders: Alok Bansal, and Yashish Dahiya(CEO)
- Headquarters: Delhi NCR
- Total Funding: $ 346M
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: Wellington Management, Inventus Capital Partners, PremjiInvest, and Tiger Global Management,
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: Insurance plan aggregator
As indicated by an IBEF report, India’s insurance penetration is at only 3.69% starting in 2017. PolicyBazaar has immediately risen as an innovator in the space and prepared for various other online insurance aggregators like Acko General Protection, Coverfox, and Easypolicy, among others.
PolicyBazaar’s development can be sketched out from its reliably rising incomes which came to ₹312 crores during FY19 from ₹159 crores in FY18. The startup neglected to hold its costs in line, which led its misfortunes to develop colossally arriving at INR 213 crores in FY19 from INR 9 crores in FY18.
Billdesk
- Foundation Year: 2000
- Founder: Ajay Kaushal, Karthik Ganapathy, M.N. Srinivasu
- Headquarters: Mumbai
- Total Funding: $257B
- Valuation: $1.8M
- Key Investors: Clearstone Venture Partners, Visa, and State Bank of India, SIDBI VC, TA Associates, General Atlantic
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: Online payments (B2B)
Today, Billdesk processes digital payments worth more than $60B a year with a wide range of partners including BSES Rajdhani Power Limited, Vodafone, Idea, Airtel, HDFC Mutual Fund, and TATA Sky, among many others. This unicorn startup in India has balanced its growth rate with its operational revenue of ₹929 crores for FY18, which was a 40% increase over FY17, and the revenue bloomed by 30% in FY17 and 40% in FY16.
Cleantech Unicorn Startups in India
Apart from incorporating Tech in Finance, Travel, and logistics, startups in our country are working to bring eco-friendlier solutions for rising energy consumption. Climatic changes and global warming have become a significant problem around the globe. Many Indian startups show their support to the government’s objective of storing energy with a focus on renewable and sustainable production.
Renew Power
- Foundation Year: 2011
- Founder: Sumant Sinha
- Headquarters: Gurugram
- Total Funding: $ 1.6M
- Valuation: $2.0B
- Key Investors: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Franklin Templeton India, L&T, etc.
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2017
- Business: Renewable energy IPP(Independent Power Producer)
ReNew Power is the first unicorn startup in India to work in the renewable energy space. Moreover, this unicorn startup in India has emerged as a leader in the Indian renewable energy market and has fuelled the country’s transition from coal-based fuels to cleaner sources like wind, water, and solar. With over 8 GW of clean energy assets and counting, ReNew Power is aiming to reduce India’s overall carbon footprint.
Transport Tech / Mobility Unicorn Startups in India
Transport systems are built on progressive, futuristic technologies. The companies operating below the segment are changing mobility games by facilitating transportation in a seamless way through on-demand cab services, carpooling, bike taxis, etc. The growing portion of the electric vehicles is leading to the growth of the mobility tech. The two Transport tech unicorn startups in India are:
Ola
- Foundation Year: 2010
- Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal (CEO), and Ankit Bhati
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $ 3.8M
- Valuation- $6.2B
- Key Investors: SoftBank, Tencent Holdings, and Tekne Capital
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2014
- Business- Ride-sharing, taxi, food delivery
Scattering its presence in India and the international markets like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, Ola boasts of having a network of over 1.5M drivers across 250 cities. Ola managed to balloon its operational revenue from ₹1,847 crores in FY18 to ₹2,543 in FY19. However, Ola also managed to marginally trim its losses from ₹2,842 crores in FY18 to ₹2,593 crores in FY19.
Ola Electric
- Foundation Year: 2018
- Founders: Bhavish Aggarwal, and Ankit Bhati
- Headquarters: Bengaluru
- Total Funding: $306M
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: Ratan Tata, SoftBank, Matrix Partners India, Kia Motors, Hyundai Motor Company, and Tiger Global
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Mobility
Ola Electric become a unicorn owing to massive funding of $250M by SoftBank in July 2019. Ola Electric has the potential to be the startup of the next decade as the EV startup is gearing up to put one million electric vehicles on Indian roads by 2021.
Related – The Future of Electric Vehicles In India
Travel tech Unicorn Startups in India
As per an IBEF report, The online travel space accounts for 40% to 50% of the total travel transactions by 2020. They also have been a game-changer for the hospitality industry. Travel tech startups have changed the ways consumers make their travel plans. Let’s look at the travel tech unicorn startups in India.:
Makemytrip
- Foundation Year: 2010
- Founders: Deep Kalra(CEO), Keyur Joshi, and Rajesh Magow
- Headquarters: Gurugram
- Total Funding: $ 548M
- Valuation: $2.69B
- Key Investors: Ctrip, Tiger Fund, Sierra Ventures, Ibibo Group, Inspirock, HolidayIQ, MyGola, and Helion Venture Partners
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2010
- Business: Flight Tickets, Hotels, Holiday Packages, Bus and Train / Railway Reservations for India & International travel.
14 company-owned travel stores in 14 cities, over 30 franchisee-owned travel stores in 28 cities, and counters in four major airports in India, Makemytrip has also won the Best Travel Portal India, Best Travel Facilitator, Best Travel Innovator among its plethora of achievements.
Best Travel Portal India, Best Travel Facilitator, Best Travel Innovator, are some of the few laurels among its plethora of achievements.
Logistics Unicorn Startups in India
Reaching the $307 Bn mark by 2020, the Indian logistics sector has become the backbone of the eCommerce, agritech, and hyperlocal sector in India. Adding technology to logistics has renovated the movement of goods like never before. This is the prime reason for boosting up of logistics unicorn startups in India. Let’s take a look at them:
Delhivery
- Foundation Year: 2011
- Founders: Bhavesh Manglani, Mohit Tandon, Kapil Bharati, Sahil Barua(CEO), and Suraj Saharan
- Headquarters: Delhi NCR
- Total Funding: $670M
- Valuation: $1.6B
- Key Investors: SoftBank, Carlyle Group, Fosun, Tiger Global, Nexus Venture Partners, and Times Internet
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: B2B & C2C Logistic Courier Service Provider, Third-party logistics
Scattered over 2,500 cities across India, Delhivery has completed 550M shipments to date. In 2013, it launched its pioneering commerce technology suites, including Godam and FALCON. During FY19, Delhivery managed to increase its revenues by 58% to reach ₹1,694 crores from 1073 crores in the previous fiscal. However, it’s losses nearly tripled to reach ₹1,781 crores in FY19 from ₹684 crores in FY18.
Rivigo
- Foundation Year: 2014
- Founders: Deepak Garg (CEO), and Gazal Kalra
- Headquarters: Gurugram
- Total Funding: $ 216M
- Valuation: $1.0B
- Key Investors: SAIF Partners, and Warburg Pincus
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2018
- Business: Logistics, Trucking Services
Rivigo, entering the Unicorn Club of India, aims to transform Indian logistics through technology. Having a fleet of over 5,000 trucks, Rivigo has made five lakh trips covering more than 30,000 pin codes across 4,000 cities in India. During FY19, Rivigo’s revenues boosted by 42% to reach ₹1,028 crores. However, due to accelerated growth Rivigo’s losses more than doubled to touch ₹600 crores from ₹270 crores.
Media & Entertainment Unicorn Startups in India
The Indian media and entertainment industry has soared heights of $39.68M by 2023. With the rise in gaming unicorn startups in India and the rapid penetration of the OTT players, the media and entertainment industry is expected to emerge as a rocket in the upcoming few years.
Dream11
- Foundation Year: 2011
- Founders: Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth
- Headquarters: At Mumbai
- Total Funding: $ 100M
- Valuation: $1.5B
- Key Investors: Steadview Capital, Think Investments, Kalaari Capital and Multiples Equity
- Entered Unicorn Club of India: 2019
- Business: Fantasy sports platform
In April 2019, Dream11 became the first Indian gaming company to enter the Unicorn Club of India. With a whopping seven crore users playing Fantasy Cricket, Football, Basketball. Kabaddi, Dream11 has become India’s largest fantasy gaming platform. The company also ranked 9 among India’s Great Mid-Size Workplaces in 2018. After its launch, Dream 11 raised Series A funding from Kalaari Capital in 2015. It managed to garner the first 50 lakh users in the same year and became the official sponsor for CPL, NBA, and ISL.
Final Thoughts: Unicorn Startups in India
All the above-mentioned Unicorns serve as the perfect testimonial to the Indian startup ecosystem’s rapid growth in the last. Apart from these unicorns, 3 previously titled unicorns have become decacorns, namely BYJU’s, OYO, and PayTM. The beginning of this decade offers vast opportunities across emerging sectors and markets for aspiring budding Indian entrepreneurs.
The Indian startup ecosystem’s future and Unicorn Club of India looks bright with these unicorns’ scintillating shine. As mentioned earlier, according to Nasscom’s latest report titled ‘Indian Tech Startup Ecosystem 2019’, India is expected to have produced 100 unicorns by the year 2025, the eCommerce and Fintech sectors leading with the maximum number of $1B companies. There unicorn startups in India give Indian aspiring and budding entrepreneurs ample reasons to look forward to the next decade.
Note – List is updated till August 2020, We keep updating the list. (Valuation and funding is an ongoing process and it can differ from time to time)
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