India saw three new unicorns every month last year; Sequoia top-most investor: Hurun

Hurun India stated in a report that India is home to 51 unicorns, 32 gazelles and 54 cheetahs. The industry saw three new unicorns every month over the last year, according to the Hurun India Future Unicorn List. The list highlighted India’s fast growing start-up ecosystem. For the uninitiated, unicorns are startups founded after 2000 with a valuation of $1 billion, while gazelles are startups that are most likely to become unicorns in two years and cheetahs are startups that could become unicorn in four years.

India’s future unicorns are worth $36 billion, which is equivalent to one-third of Delhi’s GDP at current prices. India is the third-largest unicorn ecosystem in the world, after the US (396) and China (277). The UK comes after India with 32 unicorns and Germany with 18 unicorns.

Sequoia-backed online retail store Zilingo tops the list of the companies that are likely to become unicorns next. In the list of gazelles, Zilingo is followed by gaming company Mobile Premier League, cloud kitchen start-up Rebel Foods, fitness start-up Cure.Fit, pre-owned car platform Spinny, travel technology company RateGain, a D2C personal care brand Mamaearth, auto marketplace CarDekho, robotics start-up GreyOrange and digital payments application MobiKwik.

As for cheetahs, furniture e-commerce platform PepperFry tops the list followed by e-commerce startup DealShare, point of sale solutions company Mswipe Technologies, B2B logistics provider Xpressbees, and real estate website NoBroker.

With 18 startups on the list, fintech contributed the most number of companies, followed by e-commerce (17), SaaS (7), shared economy (6), gaming, artificial intelligence, logistics and healthtech with 4 companies each, and 3 each for media and entertainment, edtech and consumer goods.

When it comes to cities, Bengaluru contributed the most number of companies at 31, followed by Mumbai 13, Gurugram 12, Delhi 5 and Noida 5.

Zilingo, Mamaearth, MobiKwik, Ecom Express, Acko General Insurance are the top-most companies on the Hurun unicorn list that are run by women.

Sequoia has invested in the most number of companies on the list at 37, including Zilingo, Mobile Premier League, Rebel Foods, Mamaearth, followed by Tiger Global Management at 18, including GreyOrange, Vedantu, Apna. InnoVen Capital has invested in followed by 17 companies, Accel in 13 companies and Trifecta Capital Advisors in 12 companies.

Kunal Shah (9), Binny Bansal (5), Ratan Tata (4), Nandan Nilekani (3), Sachin Bansal (3), NR Narayana Murthy (2), Hemendra Kothari (2), Pawan Munjal (2), Kris Gopalakrishnan (1), and Ranjan Pai (1) are some of the entrepreneurs to have invested in these unicorns. 

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