India has third-highest number of start-ups; Sequoia top investor: Hurun report

India has the third-highest number of Gazelles (start-ups that started out in 2014 on average when their founders were 34 years old), as per a report by research platform Hurun. India is the third largest globally and is only behind the US and China when it comes to the start-up ecosystem. It has already overtaken the UK successfully in terms of the number of start-ups that became unicorns.
 
“India is in the midst of a start-up boom, more than doubling its Gazelles to take the country’s official tally of unicorns to 29, and overtake the UK to third place in the world,” Hurun said its Global Gazelle Index 2021 report. The Hurun Global Gazelle Index 2021 covers those start-ups that are not yet listed on any public exchanges and are most likely to become unicorns, i.e., hit $1 billion valuation within 3 years. These start-ups are worth over $500 million. 

Leading Gazelles in India were fintech start-up Navi Technologies, logistics start-up Ecom Express and fintech start-up khatabook. San Francisco, on the other hand, is the world’s Gazelle capital as 59 Gazelles are located in the city. Shanghai is a close second with 54 Gazelles, followed by Beijing (30) and New York (36). London is Europe’s Gazelle capital with 25 Gazelles located which is more than Berlin and Paris combined.
 
Cities like Guangzhou (6), Nanjing (6), Mumbai (6), Zurich (5), Redwood City (5) and Seattle (5) have the lowest number of Gazelles located across the globe. Countries like Thailand, Ecuador, Croatia, South Africa, Nigeria and Kuwait have one Gazelle each.
 
Meanwhile, Asia comprises 43 per cent of the world’s Gazelles and is followed closely by North America at 39 per cent. Continents like Europe, Oceania, South America and Africa comprise 16 per cent, 1 per cent, 1 per cent and 0.4 per cent of the world’s Gazelles respectively.

But what is the core business of all these Gazelles that are yet to become unicorns? Fintech is the core business for these Gazelles, followed by biotech, SaaS, health tech, e-commerce and artificial intelligence. Other core businesses of these Gazelles are enterprise services, cyber security, logistics and shared economy.
 
These companies disrupted healthcare sector, financial services, business management solutions, and retail and cyber security. Other industries disrupted by Gazelles include transportation, energy, logistics, consumer electronics, semiconductors and hospitality.

According to this report, the US-based Sequoia Capital is the world’s most successful investment platform for finding and investing into start-ups as it has invested in 79 Gazelles present in 9 countries. Sequoia Capital is followed by GCV Capital, MatrixPartners, CICC and Tencent. SoftBank (12), Goldman Sachs (11), Temasek (9) and Sequoia (9) led the way in the number of countries these Gazelles came from.

Also read: Year Ender 2021: India sees third-highest number of unicorns in 2021; Byju’s most valuable: Hurun

Also read: Sequoia is world’s top unicorn investor for 2nd year in a row: Hurun Research