Zerodha, Zoho, and more: Only 17 out of 80 unicorns in India are profitable

Produced by: Bhavya Kaushal
Designed by: Pragati

India has only 17 profitable unicorn start-ups, according to market research platform, Tracxn. The country houses 114 unicorns of which 80 start-ups' data is publicly available.

The profitability index

What is a unicorn?

A unicorn is a company valued at $1 billion or above. Here are top Indian start-ups that are profitable.

The first on the list is stock brokerage firm Zerodha. Founded by the Kamath brothers, the Bengaluru-based company made a profit of Rs 2,094 crore in FY22

Zerodha: India’s top
profitable firm

Zoho: Topping the charts

Sridhar Vembu’s SaaS company Zoho also topped the charts. Zoho made a profit of Rs 1,917 crore in FY22.

Other start-ups that recorded profits during FY21 and FY22 include e-commerce platform Firstcry, fintech firm Billdesk, Molbio Diagnostics, Physicswallah etc.

Other profitable start-ups

FY22 also saw some unicorn start-ups becoming profitable for the first time, including IPO-bound Mamaearth.

First-timers

However, the number of profitable companies is still very low. There are 114 unicorns in India of which 80 start-ups’ financial data is available. Out of these only 17 are profitable.

Profitability index still low

The last few years have also seen companies moving away from the unicorn status. This is because a few unicorn companies were either acquired or made their debut on the stock market.

Upgraded from
unicorn status

Tata1mg, Blinkit, Rivigo, BigBasket, Flipkart, ShopClues saw their unicorn status changing because they were acquired.

The acquired unicorns

Paytm, Zomato, Nykaa, Delhivery, PolicyBazaar and Five Star Business Finance made their stock market debut and got upgraded from a unicorn status.

From unicorn to enterprises