India has 115 unicorns with a cumulative valuation of over $350 billion

India became the world’s third-largest start-up economy and also crossed the 100-unicorn mark in 2022. The country now ranks behind the US (661 unicorns) and China (312 unicorns). Despite the ‘funding winter’ Indian start-ups managed to raise $25 billion in capital, which was 2.2X the money raised in 2020, according to ‘The India Unicorns and Exits Tech Report 2022’ by Orios Venture Partners. 

However, compared to the highs of 2021, start-up funding declined by 30 per cent in 2022. Even start-up IPOs more than halved from 11 in 2021 to just four last year. The number of start-up acquisitions, meanwhile, fell from 250 to 229 last year. ShareChat-owned Moj acquiring MX Taka Tak for $600 million was the largest M&A, followed by Zomato’s $568 million-Blinkit buyout, and Lenskart’s $400 million-Owndays acquisition. 

During the year, 24 Indian start-ups became unicorns. Incidentally, 1 out of every 13 unicorns globally was born in India. The SaaS sector toppled fintech to become the largest-unicorn generator in 2022. Fintech ranked second, followed by logistics. Walmart-owned Flipkart remains India’s most valuable unicorn at $37.6 billion. 

Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners, said, “India remains a global hotspot in technology company value creation with 24 unicorns last year. This speaks for the deep adoption of tech across the country. The next phase of the Indian technology story will be graduating these unicorns to exits via IPOs and the coming years should see a flurry of activity in that direction.”

Bengaluru remains the largest unicorn hub in India, with 43 unicorns headquartered in the city. It also emerged as the world’s 7th largest unicorn hub in 2022. Meanwhile, Delhi and Mumbai were the second and third largest unicorn hubs with 34 and 20 start-ups respectively. "These startups are not only developing innovative solutions and technologies but are generating large-scale employment,” Orios Venture Partners stated. 

When it comes to unicorn founders, investor bias towards elite institutions like IITs and IIMs/ISB remained unchanged. Two-thirds (or over 66 per cent) of Indian unicorns have at least one or more founders from IITs, IIMs or ISB, the report revealed. Additionally, an overwhelming 80.3 per cent of unicorn founders have an engineering background.

However, when it comes to gender diversity, India still has a long way to go. The country has only 19 women unicorn founders spread across 18 start-ups.

 
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