Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, the economic impact has been severe. While businesses suffered immensely due to the lockdown, which lasted for the better part of the 2020, startups were the worst impacted. Many even had to shut down. 2020 had been a challenging year for companies, and those that powered through are slowly getting back on track. India, as a startup hub, was seen through a skeptical lens, but the reality is in contrast.
According to a new report with a unique methodology from Credit Suisse now claim that India has 100 unicorns, more than double what most reports and VCs claimed. For a startup to be a unicorn, it has to be valued at over $1 billion while still being privately held. And for India to have a hundred of those is quite an astonishing mark.
The report also highlighted some interesting statistics on the geographical spot of the unicorns. Bengaluru dominated with 28 percent of unicorn startups from the city, followed by Mumbai at 20 percent and other cities with a single-digit percentage.
India's 100 unicorns
Here's a look at all the 100 unicorns that India currently has. These unicorns are not only from the technology or technology-enabled sector but belong to conventional sectors like non-banking finance, biotech and pharmaceuticals, modern trade, consumer goods as well as infrastructure, the report said.
E-commerce
BookMyShow
BookMyShow is an Indian online ticketing service for cinemas, theaters, and sports. It was recently valued at $1.1 billion.
FirstCry
FirstCry is an online shopping store offering a wide range of baby care products and toys. It was recently valued at $2.1 billion based on value of some early backers looking to sell their stake.
CarDekho
CarDekho is an auto portal that helps its users with car research, finance, insurance, used cars and other aspects of buying and selling cars.
Cars24
Used car marketplace Cars24 become unicorn in India in last November after raising $200 million. It is valued at more than $1 billion.
Cure.fit
Cure.fit is a health and fitness company offering digital and offline experiences across fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being. The valuation sought by CureFit is the double of its $500 million funding.
Flipkart
Flipkart is one of the best success stories looked up to by entrepreneurs and founders. It is valued at a whopping $15.5 billion and it was recently acquired by Walmart. Its subsidiaries include Myntra, jabong.com, and PhonePe.
Lenskart
Lenskart is an Indian optical prescription eyewear retail chain. As of December 2019, it had a valuation of $1.5 billion, earning the company a unicorn tag.
Nykaa
Nykaa is an Indian lifestyle retailer of beauty, wellness, and fashion products. As of 2020, Nykaa is valued at $1.2 billion and it is one of many Indian unicorn startups.
BigBasket
BigBasket is an online grocery delivery service and it reached a valuation of $1 billion in March 2019.
Urban Company
Urban Company is an Indian gig marketplace that offers home installation, maintenance and repair services, and home beauty and wellness services. In May 2020, Urban Company reported an operating revenue of Rs 216 crore and its valuation was at Rs 918 crore.
Education
Byju's
Byju's is an online learning startup that was valued at $11.1 billion as on September 2020.
Unacademy
Like Byju's, Unacademy is an online education platform that has since grown multifold. It is now valued at $2 billion and it reported net income of $31 million last year.
Eruditus
Another Indian education platform that has shot to fame is Eruditus, started by Harvard alumnus. The ed-tech platform has raised $163.3 million.
Sri Chaitanya Schools
Sri Chaitanya Schools is a noted Andhra Pradesh and Telangana school chain. It was valued at $1.1 billion in 2019 when Private equity investor Brookfield and Kalpathi Investments expressed interest in buying the school chain.
Energy
CLP Wind Farms
CLP Wind Farms builds, develops, and manages electricity from wind power plants. CLP Wind Farms serves customers in India.
Greenko
Greenko is an Indian renewable energy developer, which as recently as September 2020 attracted $980 million investment from Japan's Orix.
Mytrah Energy
Mytrah Energy is a renewable Independent Power Producer that has 40 operational and under-development power projects across 9 Indian states. It has raised over $600 million in four funding rounds.
ReNew Power
ReNew Power is an Indian renewable energy company that operates over 110 projects across eight states in India.
Financials
Aptus Finance
Aptus Finance is valued at around Rs 20,000 crore and is eyeing for a Rs 3,000 crore IPO. Aptus fulfills the housing finance needs of self-employed, low and middle-income families primarily from semi-urban and rural areas.
BharatPe
BharatPe is a developer of merchant payment application designed to promote and offer digital payment services. As of last month, it was only $100 million short of a unicorn status after being valued at $900 million.
BillDesk
BillDesk is an Indian online payment gateway company. It is valued at $1 billion.
Five Star Business Finance
Five-Star Business Finance Limited operates as a non-banking finance company. It is valued at $1.2-1.3 billion.
Groww
Groww is an India-based online investment platform that allows investors to open an account electronically and transact in mutual funds and stocks online. It is valued at $1 billion.
Hero Fincorp
Hero Fincorp is an Indian non-banking financial company currently engaged in consumer finance businesses and commercial lending. It has a net worth of $1.1 billion.
National Stock Exchange
National Stock Exchange of India Limited is the leading government-owned stock exchange of India. It has a market cap of more than $2.27 trillion, making it the world's 11th largest stock exchange.
Paytm
Paytm is an Indian e-commerce payment system and financial technology company. As of January 2018, it was valued at $10 billion.
PhonePe
PhonePe is an Indian digital wallet platform and online payment company. In 2018, the company is valued at $8-$12 billion.
Pine Labs
Pine Labs is an Indian merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology. It is one of the unicorn companies, with a valuation of over US$1 billion.
Razorpay
Razorpay is a converged payments solution company in India that allows businesses to accept, process, and disburse payments via its product suite. As of 2020, it is valued at $1 billion.
Star Health
Star Health is a standalone health insurance provider that provides services in health, personal accident and overseas travel insurance. It became a unicorn in March 2019 with valuation of Rs.1480 crore.
Zerodha
Zerodha is an Indian financial services company, that offers retail and institutional broking, currencies and commodities trading, mutual funds, and bonds. It is valued at $1 billion.
IT/Tech
CitiusTech
CitiusTech is a healthcare technology company that provides services for software development, data management and analytics solutions to healthcare providers, medical technology and life sciences companies. The company is valued at Rs 2,000 crore.
Dailyhunt
Dailyhunt is an Indian content and news aggregator application that provides local language content in 14 Indian languages from multiple content providers. Through a tranche of investment, DailyHunt turned into a unicorn.
Glance
Glance, which feeds news and sports scores to phone-lock screens, is said to have reached a valuation of more than $1 billion after completing a funding round led by Google in 2020.
GlobalLogic
GlobalLogic is a digital product engineering services company that provides software product development services.
Grey Orange
Artificial Intelligence-powered robotics company GreyOrange touched $700 million valuation after scoring $100 million in 2020. It is one of those rare 'Born in India' firms that have made a significant mark in the robotics industry.
Headspin
HeadSpin is a mobile app testing company and was recently valued at $1.1 billion.
InMobi
InMobi has earned the title of being India's first unicorn and hit the $1-billion-valuation mark in 2011 post-SoftBank's investment. It even scaled its mobile content platform Glance as well to the unicorn status.
Meesho
Meesho is a social commerce platform and was the first Indian startup to receive investment from Facebook. It was recently valued at around $2 billion.
MX Player
MX Player is a video streaming and video on demand platform with millions of users globally. It is nearing unicorn status with its current valuation at $900 million.
Sharechat
Sharechat is a social media and social networking service and it recently joined the unicorn club with over $1 billion valuation after funding from Google, Snap and Twitter.
Synechron
Synechron is a digital consulting firm with a wide presence in India
UST
UST, formerly known as UST Global, is a leading digital transformation and technology that provides advanced computing and digital innovation solutions to large enterprises across the globe. It is headquartered in California, US and has large presence in India. It has over 26,000+ employees globally across 25 countries, and 15,000+ employees in India. The company has offices in Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru, Kochi, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Hosur, Coimbatore and Delhi-NCR in India. It is a privately head company, with reportedly over $1.2 Billion revenue YoY. It was invested by Temasek, Singapore Sovereign Fund, in 2018.
SaaS
BrowserStack
BrowserStack operates a web and mobile application testing platform. In 2018, the company was valued at $500 million and is said to achieved unicorn status.
Chargebee
Enterprise software firm Chargebee raised about $150 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion, earning the coveted unicorn status.
Druva
Druva delivers a SaaS-based platform to protect and manage enterprise data across endpoint, data center and cloud workloads. It crossed $1 billion in valuation 2019.
Eightfold
Talent intelligence platform Eightfold AI on Monday raised $125 million in a funding round in November 2020, valuing the Noida-based company at $ 1 billion
Freshworks
Freshworks is a SaaS startup, disrupting traditional CRM, ITSM, Customer Support, and Marketing Automation. Freshworks' value was $1.5 billion in 2019 and by 2020 through series of funding rounds, the valuation reached $3.5 billion.
HighRadius
HighRadius is an AI-powered FinTech Software as a Service firm that achieved unicorn status after its $125 million Series B funding in January 2020, estimating it at over $1billion.
IBS Software
IBS Software is an India-based aviation software major. Market analysts estimate IBS' valuation in the range of $1.5 to $2 billion.
Icertis
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Icertis recently raised around $80 million, pushing its valuation to $2.8 billion.
Innovaccer
Innovaccer connects healthcare data across a myriad of systems and settings, delivering unified patient records and actionable insights that result in better patient outcomes and lower costs. It was recently valued at $1.3 billion.
Postman
Postman is an API development platform that allows users build and collaborate on application programming interfaces or APIs. It was valued at $2 billion after raising $150 million funding in June last year.
Zenoti
Zenoti is a provider of cloud-based software for the spa and salon industries. It was in December 2020 when it hit $1 billion valuation after the Series D funding round where it raised $160 million.
Zoho
Zoho needs no introduction as its journey of a bootstrapped startup is an inspiration to many entrepreneurs. It specializes in software development, cloud computing, and web-based business tools. It is valued at over $1 billion, but its estimated market value of between $5 billion – $15 billion.
Healthcare
Anthem Biosciences
Anthem Biosciences is a fully integrated pharmaceutical and biotechnology firm. A private equity fund True North's acquisition of a minority stake in Anthem Biosciences ($75-$100 million for 8-10 percent) put its valuation at $1 billion.
Bharat Biotech
Bharat Biotech is a biotechnology company that drug discovery, drug development, manufacture of vaccines, bio-therapeutics, pharmaceuticals and health care products. Its Covaxin for COVID-19 is one of the two vaccines approved for emergency use in India.
Emcure Pharmaceuticals
Emcure Pharmaceuticals is an Indian pharmaceutical company that manufactures tablets, capsules, and injectables. In 2020, Emcure promoters expected a valuation of $2 billion for the privately-held company.
Hetero Labs
Hetero Labs is a generic pharmaceutical company and the "world's largest producer of anti-retroviral drugs". Its business includes APIs, generics, biosimilars, custom pharmaceutical services, and branded generics. The company achieved a turnover of Rs.1385 crore till Sep 30, 2020.
Intas Pharmaceuticals
Intas Pharmaceuticals is an independent biotechnology division of Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd. It is a mid-sized generic formulation manufacturer. Intas Pharma was valued at $3.5 billion in June 2020.
Macleods Pharmaceuticals
Macleods Pharmaceuticals Ltd. engages in the manufacture of wide range of finished drug products and Active Pharmaceutical ingredients. The company specializes in the segments of Cardiovascular, Diabetes, Orthopedics, Gynecology, Respiratory and Oncology.
Manipal Hospitals
Manipal Hospitals is a chain of multi-specialty hospitals in India. Founded in 1953, Its network is spread across 15 locations in India and also holds an international presence.
PharmEasy
PharmEasy is an online healthcare aggregator that provides medicines delivery & diagnostic tests to patients. It was valued at $1.2 billion in 2020.
Serum Institute of India
Serum Institute of India is an Indian biotechnology and pharmaceuticals company and the world's largest vaccine manufacturer. Its Covishield vaccine is one of the two vaccines approved in India for emergency use. Serum Institute of India is worth $12.8 billion.
Discretionary
Allied Blenders and Distillers
Allied Blenders and Distillers of Officer's Choice fame is a renowned Indian whiskey manufacturer and is considered one of the largest spirit brands in the world. By the end of 2018, it had a rough valuation of around $1.8 billion.
D' Decor
D'Decor is a producer of curtain and upholstery fabrics. It currently exports home fabrics to 15 countries and it was awarded the World's Largest Woven Upholstery and Curtain mill by Fabric & Furnishing International.
GRT Jewellers
GRT Jewellers is a jewelry brand based in Chennai, which sells diamond, gold, silver and platinum jewelry.
Joyalukkas
Joyalukkas is an Indian jeweler that has 160 showrooms across the globe. It was named after Joy Alukkas, the company's founder and chairman. It has a net worth of $2 billion.
KurlOn
KurlOn is a mattress company that manufactures home comfort products that include mattresses, pillows, topper and accessories.
Oyo Rooms
OYO is an Indian hospitality chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes and living spaces. In August 2020, it was valued at $8 billion.
Piramal Glass
Piramal Glass is an Indian glass packaging company providing packaging for the Pharmaceutical and Perfume Industry. It was recently valued at about $1 billion.
RateGain
RateGain is a software company known for developing various SaaS -based hospitality and travel technologies. It is worth about $6.2 billion.
Vini Cosmetics
Vini Cosmetics of the Fogg fame had the fastest ramp-up among FMCG companies in India. It was recently valued at Rs 8,500 crore, well over the $1 billion mark to earn the unicorn status.
Vishal Mega Mart
Vishal Mega Mart a company engaged in Hypermarket stores with an average area of 25,000 to 30,000 sq. ft. It has 172 fully integrated stores spread over more than 24,00,000 sq. ft. in around 129 cities across India. Its operating revenues range is Over INR 500 cr for the financial year ending on 31 March, 2019 and book net worth increased by 51.06 percent in the same period.
Logistics
Delhivery
Delhivery is an Indian delivery company of the new-age. It is now aiming for pre-IPO funding at $3 billion valuation. It was valued at over $2 billion after the secondary investment from Steadview Capital in December last year.
Ecom Express
Ecom Express is an e-commerce-focused Indian logistics and distribution services company. It has already raised $485.4 million in a series of funding rounds.
Essar Ports
Essar Ports is a mining and construction company dealing with energy, metals & mining, infrastructure & various other services. It reported a revenue of $1,400 crore in 2020.
Udaan
Udaan is a B2B online wholesale market for Mobiles, Clothing, Industrials, Food & FMCG products. The company was recently valued at $3.1 billion in January, up from $2.8 billion in October 2019.
Mobility
Ola
Ola Cabs is an Indian ridesharing company offering services that include vehicle for hire and food delivery. In March 2021, Ola's valuation was cut from $6 billion to $3 billion.
Ola Electric
Ola Electric is a product by Ola and it aims to place 10,000 e-rickshaws in service over the next 12 months. it was valued at $1 billion after it got SoftBank to invest $250 million.
Zoomcar
Zoomcar is an Indian self-drive car rental company with operations in 45 cities across the country. It has raised a total of over $193.6 million in over 18 rounds.
Others
Swiggy
Swiggy is India's largest online food ordering and delivery platform with operations in 100 cities across the country. It is valued at about $3.7 billion.
Zomato
Zomato is an Indian restaurant aggregator and food delivery start-up and its service is available in 24 countries and in more than 10,000 cities. It is valued at $5.4 billion.
Wonder Cement
Wonder Cement is one of the largest cement makers in north-western India. It was valued at $800-900 million in 2018.
Deccan Fine Chemicals
Deccan Fine Chemicals manufactures chemicals and offers specialty polymers, rubber chemicals, dyes, and pigments. It caters to large-scale custom manufacturing needs of global customers in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals.
Gharda Chemicals
Gharda Chemicals is a research-based company with business interests in agrochemicals, polymers, and high-performance pigments. It was valued at around Rs 9,500 crore in 2019, earning the unicorn status.
Enzen Global Solutions
Enzen Global Solutions has interests in power, water, gas and clean energy sectors and operates across India and offers solutions and services for utilities across power, water, gas and clean energy verticals.
Mu Sigma
Mu Sigma is an Indian decision sciences firm that primarily offers data analytics services and develops decision support system tools and software for Fortune 500 organizations. It is valued at around $1.2 billion.
Digit Insurance
Digit Insurance is Fairfax-backed digital insurance company. Digit Insurance achieved the $1 billion-plus valuation in three years of operations. It is the first start-up to enter the unicorn club in 2021.
Policybazaar
Policybazaar is an Indian insurance aggregator and a global financial technology company. In March, the company raised $45 million at $2.4 billion valuation.
Haldiram's
Haldiram's is an Indian sweets, snacks and restaurant company. It is valued at $3 billion and had a revenue of $1 billion in 2019.
Parle Products
Parle Products Private Limited is an Indian food products company. It owns the famous biscuit brand Parle-G. The privately held biscuit, confectionery and snacks maker gets the bulk of its estimated $1.6 billion revenues from biscuits.
RSPL
Ghadi Detergent powder is manufactured by RSPL Limited (RSPL), which is the best way to identify the brand. It was valued at around $1 billion in 2012.
Altria Convergence
Atria Convergence Technologies Limited, branded as ACT, is an Indian telecommunications company that offers fibre to the home (FTTH) services under the brand name "ACT Fibernet" and digital television services under the "ACT Digital" brand.
Bhilosa Industries
Bhilosa Industries Private Limited manufactures textile products. The company offers polyester yarn and fabric products.
Mobile Premier League
Mobile Premier League is a mobile e-Sports platform based in India. Users can compete in multiple skill-based mobile gaming tournaments on MPL. It is now valued at $945 million.
Dream11
Dream11 is an Indian fantasy sports platform that allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, and basketball. In April 2019, Dream11 became the first Indian gaming company to enter the "Unicorn Club".
Games 24/7
Games 24/7 is a gaming company that also operates an online rummy business. The estimated annual revenue is currently $67.9M per year.
