The Indian Unicorns

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

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Vol 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Publisher BudBiz Founder & CEO Himanshu Tyagi Editor-in-chief: Tannishtha Mukherjee Copy Editor: Priyanka Tyagi Content Manager: Himanshi Jain Editorial Team: Neha Maurya, Kusum Vats, Aditi Gautam, Shreya Malakar Design Head: Himanshu Koli Digital Team: Amit Sharma ------------------------------------------------Head of Sales & Marketing: Chetan Kaushik Sales Team: Annu Vimal, Ritu Chauhan, Anubha Singh Chauhan, Anushka Gupta, Sanchit Rathi, Shubham Goel Data & Research: Naval Kishore, Sanjay Sharma Marketing & PR: Krishiv Kumar Advertisement: Mayank Gulati Subscription: Maniraj Reddy HR: Simran Khanna Corporate Office Address: A-204, Third Floor, Vikaspuri, New Delhi-110018 Ph. No. : +91 9871258991 Email: budbiz@gmail.com BudBiz does not accept responsibility for returning unsolicited materials & photographs. All unsolicited material should be accomplished by self-addressed envelope & sufficient postage.

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Editor’s Note

I

ndian startups are witnessing a new wave in recent years. Today, India is home to more than 69,000 startups and has become the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world.

In May 2022, India celebrated the completion of 100 unicorns. The country has now the most number of unicorn startups after the US and China. With a net worth of over $1 billion, unicorns are the highest valued companies in the country.

Out of every 10 unicorns in the world, 1 comes from India. These unicorns are not only developing innovative solutions and technologies but are also generating large-scale employment. The combined capital of all the 100 unicorns is $332.7 billion. Startups from all the industries such as Tech, Saas, eCommerce and Fintech and many more are included in the list of unicorns.

BudBiz through its June Edition acknowledges the achievements of the unicorn Startups in India. This issue features the journey, challenges and success of startups that entered the elite club of Unicorns in India.

The magazine, at the same time, also sheds light on the precarious economic situations of unicorns.

Happy Reading! We hope you enjoy this Issue!

BudBiz Leave a feedback at budbiz@gmail.com

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content FEATURES 19 28 39 40 42 43 50

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COVER STORY

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BYJU'S FLIPKART NYKAA OLA OYO PAYTM SWIGGY

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STARTUP FACTS

58

UNICORNS:

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

MORE STARTUPS 24

DELHIVERY

37

MOBIKWIK

25

DROOM

38

OFBUSINESS

26

FIRSTCRY

44

PHARMEASY

29

GAMES24X7

46

PRISTYN CARE

31

HIKE

47

REBEL FOODS

32

INFOEDGE

51

UNACADEMY

33

LENSKART

52

URBAN COMPANY

34

MAMAEARTH

52

VEDANTU

35

MAKEMYTRIP

53

XPRESSBEES

35

MEESHO

54

ZOMATO

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COVER STORY

INDIAN

COMPLETE A

CENTURY

M

ay 05th 2022 was the day when India completed its 100 unicorns with a total valuation of $332.7 billion. Whenever we talk about business growth, Covid 19 has to be a must discussed topic. The pandemic caused a great number of socio-economic disturbances but some resilient Indian entrepreneurs capitalized on these difficult times to contribute a significant share to the Indian economy.

In 2021, India witnessed the emergence of 44 unicorns with a total valuation of $93 billion while 2022 (as of 05th May 2022) saw the birth of 14 unicorns with a total valuation of $18.9 billion. Geographically, Bengaluru is India’s unicorn capital with the largest number of unicorns followed by the National Capital Delhi (NCR) and Mumbai. Traditional sectors like Internet software, fintech, e-commerce, supply chain & logistics are dominating the list but unconventional sectors such as hospitality, gaming, content, data management & analytics are too making their significant place among the 100 unicorns.

The Global | The Hues Dawn | Vol.of2Startups! | Issue 5| Vol. | May 1 2022 | Issue 1 | 8 | BudBiz

June 2022

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COVER STORY UNICORN

A Unicorn refers to a company with a valuation of over $1 billion.

DECACORN

A Decacorn is a firm that exceeds the valuation of $10 billion.

SOONICORN

Any company that is going to be a Unicorn in the near future is termed a Soonicorn.

INDIA: FROM A JOB SEEKER TO A JOB CREATOR COUNTRY With the onset of Indian Unicorns, India has transformed into a country of job creators instead of job seekers. Many startups have been able to create estimated thousands of new jobs. As per the reports, startups have contributed a much larger share to job creation, with 5,49,842 jobs reported by 48,093 startups with an average number of 11 employees per startup. In the 2020 to 2021 period alone, about 1.7 lakh jobs were created by recognized startups.

A BILLION DOLLAR VALUATION IN GROWTH STAGE

Angel Investors and Venture Capital organisations use different methods to understand the value of a business venture before investing and starting with seed funding. Following that, investors raise venture capital in ‘rounds.’

Data courtesy: Inc42 Currently, 1 out of every 10 unicorns globally has been born in India. Any startup has its own journey and pace of becoming a unicorn, however, the minimum and maximum time taken by a startup to become a unicorn are 6 months and 26 years, respectively.

Further, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry mentioned that "As we hit the milestone of a century in Indian unicorns, the homegrown startup ecosystem continues to work effectively towards the mission of self-reliance and self-sustainability as they have been in the past. The vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat is rooted deeply in the Startup Ecosystem and shall continue to prevail in the coming years."

FEATURES OF A UNICORN STARTUP

Running a startup isn’t easy at all, it involves taking many risks and prospering in the market. Moreover, if one is

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willing to risk the usual, they will have to settle for the ordinary. It is the consistent focus and ‘never give up’ approach that helps a startup become a unicorn.

Some of the major features of a unicorn startup are:  High On Tech Quite obvious! Any startup that becomes a unicorn runs its business model on technology as it helps them grow its customer base. For example, Uber’s model got accepted after it crafted a friendly application. Paytm started by establishing itself as a platform for people to pay for limited utilities such as DTH and mobile recharges.

The Starters Many startups have become a unicorn by venturing into a field that was left untargeted. This approach has helped them stand out from the competition.

Nevertheless, the scenario has changed slightly. Many startups that are not

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pioneers in their niche are also coming forward to become a unicorn.  Innovation Is The Key With the power of constant innovation, most unicorn startups have brought a disruption in their respective fields. For example, Oyo Rooms has changed the way people used to book accommodation for them. Uber has changed the way people commuted. PayTM has changed the way people pay for things offline and online. Snapchat is disrupting social media by inventing new trends.  Private Ownership Startups that are privately owned have higher chances of emerging as a unicorn than the ones which are not private. The valuation of a privately owned startup grows heavily as they have higher chances of attracting funding from big investors at the national and international levels.

Series A Funding: It is a funding that provides businesses extra capital to pay

employees, perform market research, launch their products or services, and develop marketing strategies. Many startups fail in Series A funding.

Series B Funding: After a business successfully launches its products or services in the market, the company pursues Series B funding to move from development to expansion. The expansion not only means gaining more customers but also growing the team to serve the growing customer base.

Series C Funding: In this funding, investors inject more capital into the successful business to scale the business and help it grow as quickly and successfully as possible. Generally, companies look forward to expanding their reach to international markets.

Series D Funding: This round of funding is a little more complicated than the previous rounds. Companies seek Series D funding when they discover a

new opportunity for expansion before going for an IPO (Initial Public Offering).

Furthermore, companies raise Series D rounds to increase their value before going public.

Series E Funding: Fewer companies make it to a Series E round of funding.

Companies may raise Series E funding due to reasons such as - wanting to stay private for even longer, needing help before going public or failing to meet expectations.

Bootstrapping: It refers to a process in which a company starts its operations with only personal savings, including borrowed funds from family or friends or income from initial sales. It does not involve any external funding.

As per the reports, out of 100 unicorns from India, 8 per cent of unicorns have achieved a billion-dollar valuation in the growth stage (it refers to startups in their Series A or Series B funding stage)

8% Unicorns Achieved Billion Dollar Valuation in Growth Stage

Data courtesy: Inc42 BudBiz | The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022 |

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COVER STORY

INDIAN UNICORN ACROSS GEOGRAPHIES

Data courtesy: Inc42

THE CONTRIBUTION OF STARTUP INDIA INITIATIVE

A Government of India initiative, Startup India was unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16th January, 2016 with an objective to build a strong ecosystem to nurture innovation and empower startups across India to drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment.

Under the initiative, 19 point Action Plan envisages several incubation centres, ease of setting up a business, easier patent filing, tax exemptions, INR 10,000 crore corpus fund, a speedy exit mechanism and several other benefits.

The initiative helped India to realize the hidden creative potential of today’s youth. Furthermore, many MNCs have started opening their Research & Development Centres in India to take

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the maximum advantage and business growth for their companies. Reports suggest that more than 800 MNCs have opened their R&D Centres in India in the last 10 years which have contributed to the employment of more than half a million Indian resources.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has reported that more than 61,400 startups have been launched in India, out of which the active ones are 39,960. India witnessed the emergence of 4200, 3500 and 1250 startups in the year 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively. Various factors like innovative thinking, creative application, intellectual power, use of technology, and the ability to experiment in a competitive and highly challenging market have led to the noticeable growth of many startups turning many into Unicorns.

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STILL A BACK SEAT IN WOMEN PARTICIPATION

Data courtesy: Inc42

STILL A BACK SEAT IN WOMEN PARTICIPATION

Though India has completed a century in the number of Unicorns, the nation takes a back seat when it comes to the participation of women. As per the reports by Inc42, 85 per cent of unicorns have no women founders. This clearly depicts that irrespective of the progressive diversity, several schemes & policies framed by the government, we are failing in maintaining gender equality in the corporate field. The report also mentions that out of 15 unicorns with at least one female founder, 43 per cent are from the e-commerce sector and it is the highest. Delhi NCR has a total of 7 Unicorns while Bengaluru and Mumbai stand at 5 and 3 respectively.

The problem that lies at the grassroot level is the challenges that women-led businesses face. Fundraising issues,

systematic obstacles, and male-dominated investor firms are some of the persistent hurdles that hinder the path of women founders to list their companies under the unicorns club.

Furthermore, any startup company becomes a billion-dollar company via fundraising and investment, no matter if it is led by a man or a woman. Even when women start up, the most challenging factor is raising funds to run the business.

FROM UNICORN TO DECACORN

Startups begin their journey with no monetary value attached. They attract investors based on the attractiveness of the idea, the mission & vision of the startup, the business plan’s rationality, and their evaluation of the market for the goods or services.

A journey of a startup from attracting investors to becoming a unicorn isn’t easy. To boast off, some unicorns have entered the Decacorn Club. A decacorn is a company with more than a $10 billion valuation. Bengaluru based startup Swiggy has become the fourth decacorn from India after fintech firm PayTM, hotel aggregator OYO, and edtech startup Byju’s.

has already completed a count of 100 unicorns while some are ready to attain the unicorn status.

However, it is not necessary that every startup that becomes a unicorn will end up becoming a successful business. Success is never accidental. Every startup needs to go the extra mile to carve the path to success.

FINAL WORDS

The word ‘Unicorn’ was first coined by Venture Capitalist Aileen Lee, Founder of Cowboy Ventures in 2013 to describe a startup company with a value of over $1 billion. This word is not just a mythological creature anymore. It is now becoming popular in business and finance discussions. Any startup that becomes a unicorn deserves applause as it is a strong signal of success. India

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INDIAN UNICORNS

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Acko

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Ruchi Deepak, Varun Dua

Apna

Name

BharatPe

Industry

Recruiting, Human Resources

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Nirmit Parikh, Tanmay Desai Founders

Ashneer Grover, Bhavik Koladiya, Shashvat Nakrani

Founding Year 2019

Founding Year 2016 Investors

Name

Multiples, General Atlantic, Munich RE, Ascent Capital, Amazon

Investors

Sequoia, Tiger Global Management, Lightspeed, Greenoaks

Founding Year Investors

Incepted in 2016, Acko is India’s first and fastest-growing FinTech company that is making the buying and selling of insurance effortlessly smooth. Acko ignited the technology with insurance, making the entire process smooth by eliminating the hassle of paperwork. Starting with 6 employees, Acko is now a team of over 400 employees who are highly professionals. The company partnered with the most renowned brands like OYO, Rapido, Amazon, Red Bus, Ola and Zomato.

Acko was awarded the Golden Peacock Award for innovative product and service and the Entrepreneur 2019 Startup of the year- Fintech Award. The company is also featured in the Coolest Startups list of Business Today. In 2021, the FinTech startup became a unicorn. The net worth of the company crossed the $1 billion mark after raising the funds of $ 255 million in the Series D funding led by the investors like Amazon, Ascent Capital, and Intact Ventures.

Name Industry Founders Founding Year Investors

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Amagi Media, Advertising, Entertainment Baskar Subramanian, Srinivasan KA, Srividhya Srinivasan 2008 Norwest, Venture Partners, PremjiInvest, Accel

India’s first professional application for the rising workforce, Apna is on a mission to connect people with opportunities. With the intention to connect job seekers with employers, it helps job seekers to apply for jobs & talk and interact with corresponding Human Resource Officers of the companies directly and vice versa. It is currently operating in 74 cities namely Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Goa, Allahabad, Ujjain, to name a few. Some renowned companies of India like Delhivery, Zomato, Burger King, Teamlease rely on Apna for hiring needs and consider it a trusted source.

Apna became a unicorn approximately 21 months after its inception and has successfully developed as a professional networking and job platform.

Amagi is a cloud technology pioneer and leading platform that provides Saas technology for broadcast and connected TV networks. With the experience of more than 10 years, the company offers three business models that include Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS), Fully Managed Service, and Bring your own license. Amagi is working with the aim of transforming the entertainment industry with cloud-based technology.

The company is associated with over 500 content brands and manages more than 2000 channel deliveries in 40 countries across the world. After raising the funds of $95 million led by the Accel, Amagi crossed the $1 billion mark and achieved the status of a unicorn.

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2018 Sequoia, Tiger Global, Northern Arc, Coatue, Trifecta Capital

India's first UPI interoperable QR code, BharatPe was founded in 2018. It is an Indian B2B platform that offers QR-based payment methods. The app helps merchants, retailers and shop owners with digital transactions. With over 50 lakh merchants across various cities of the country, BharatPe is growing enormously since its inception. The company processes 5 crore transactions per month.

Among the first fintech startup, BharatPe has got an instant hit among its users. The free and effortless UPI payments and the same day acceptance of the payment attract the merchants and shopkeepers to BharatPe. The easy to use app accept payments from all apps like Mobiwik, Google Pay, Paytm, and Freecharge. The company has raised the US $142.5 million from various investors like SteadView Capital, Coatue Management LLC, Sequoia, Beenext, Insight Partners, and Amplo. In 2021, BharatPe became the fifth fintech startup to turn into a unicorn crossing the mark of $1 Billion.

Name

Billdesk

Consumer Services

Industry

Fintech, Finance, Payments

Hari Menon, V.S. Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari and V.S. Ramesh

Founders

Ajay Kaushal, Karthik Ganapathy, Srinivasu

Name

BigBasket

Industry Founders

Founding Year 2011 Investors

Alibaba, Mirae Asset, Helion, Trifecta Capital

India’s largest online food and grocery store, BigBasket delivers everyday essentials like rice, butter, pulses and more at the doorstep. With over 40,000 products and over 1000 brands, BigBasket has everything in the grocery one would look for. The company always takes care of the varied needs and shopping habits of its customers. Furthermore, the company always tries to stay particular about the timely delivery of the products. BigBasket has indeed revolutionized the way how people used to buy groceries.

Some of the competitors that give BigBasket a tough competition are SoftBank funded Grofers and Sequoia-backed PepperTap. Other competitors include Zomato, Amazon, and Reliance Fresh to name a few.

Founding Year Investors

2000 Visa, TA Associates, SBI, General Atlantic, Clearstone

Billdesk is a popular fintech platform that is making payment safe, secure, and convenient. Founded in 2000, the company offers its services spanning payments, engagements and credit and has successfully emerged as one of the largest bill payment platforms.

The platform integrated with the technology, allows the customers to make payments faster and through a reliable mode. The company processes 100 million API calls daily.

Billdesk maintains its partnership with businesses of every size including HDFC Bank, SBI, Aditya Birla Capital, Birla Sun Life and many more. The company was valued at over $1 billion after raising the funds of $84.85, making it a unicorn. BillDesk with its CSR initiative helps eradicate poverty, malnutrition and hunger.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Blackbuck

Industry

Logistics

Founders

Chanakya Hridaya, Rajesh Yabaji, Ramasubramaniam B

Founding Year

2015

Investors

Sequoia, Accel, InnoVen Capital, Sands Capital, Goldman Sachs

India’s largest trucking network, Blackbuck has played a pivotal role in bringing the online process into the trucking business.

The company was started in 2015 by Rajesh Yabji, Chanakya Hridaya, and Ramasubramaniam B. The founder trio envisions making Blackbuck a company that redefines the landscape of the logistic system in India. The company offers its services to truckers and shippers for a seamless, efficient and reliable platform. Via Blackbuck, Truckers get access to the right truck at the right time and place with just one click.

The company has a client base of more than 10,000 customers that includes the most renowned companies like Coca-Cola, Amul, Asian Paints, Tata Steel, Hindustan Unilever, and many more. The funding raised by BlackBuck of $67 million led the company to enter the list of unicorns. The company attracts sterling investors like Tiger Global, Tribe Capital, Flipkart, Goldman Sachs, and Light Street Captial.

BlackBuck received many prestigious achievements and awards for its efficient and reliable services. The company was awarded ‘Entrepreneur To watch’ by Economic Times, and ‘Startup Of The Year’ 2018 by CNBC TV 18.

A Bangalore-based startup, BYJU’s is among the leading edTech companies in India. BYJU’s is revolutionising education with technology to make learning more effective, adaptive and engaging. It was established in 2011 to make education more accessible, innovative and personalised. Under the parent company Think and Learn Pvt Ltd, BYJU’s runs on the freemium model. The company aims to provide online classes and video lectures for Pre-K–12 education and those preparing for the competitive exams.

The courses are available in multiple languages which makes it easier for students to understand better.

Name

BYJU's

Industry

Edtech Byju Raveendran & Founders Divya Gokulnath Founding 2011 Year Investors

DST Global, Tiger Global, Sequoia

In August 2015, the company introduced its flagship platform - BYJU’s learning app. It registered more than 100 million subscribers and was a huge success. The company now includes famous brands like Disney-BYJU’S Early Learn, WhiteHat Jr, Toppr, BYJU’S Future School, Tynker, etc.

Backed by the blue-chip investors like Bond Capital, BlackRock, Alkeon Capital Management, Owl Ventures, Tiger Global and others, BYJU’s is the world’s most valuable ed-tech startup that achieved the status of Decacorn.

MEET THE FOUNDERS

Name

Blinkit

Industry

Consumer Services

Founders

Albinder Dhindsa, Saurabh Kumar

Founding Year

2013

Investors

Tiger Global, Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator

Blinkit is an eCommerce platform that was earlier known as Grofers. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in Gurugram. Blinkit provides a platform that delivers a variety of products including groceries, baby care and bakery items. The name of the company - Blinkit, represents the fast delivery of the products within a blink of an eye. The company rebrands itself with the aim to enfold the quick eCommerce platform.

The 10-minute delivery concept received a lot of backlash, and people claim that it is not safe for the delivery man to deliver this fast. But, Albinder Dhindsa claimed that the 10-minute delivery is done systematically and no rider accidents are reported so far.

The business model of Blinkit works on a Hyperlocal on-demand system. The company eliminates the trouble for the consumer to go to the local shop and buy. The company ties up with local shops and merchants for the business and earns revenue on a commission basis. Zomato supports the company with its capital requirements. After raising funds from Zomato, Blinkit entered the list of unicorns.

Byju Raveendran, the Founder & CEO of BYJU’s took birth in Azhikode, Kerala in 1980. He holds a B.Tech degree in Mechanical Engineering from Government Engineering College in Kannur, Kerala. Before establishing his startup, he used to work in a multinational shipping company as a service engineer. His love for teaching and education pushed him toward finding BYJU’s.

Divya Gokulnath, the CoFounder & Director of the company, is the wife of Byju Raveendran. She completed her B.Tech in Biotechnology from RV College of Engineering. Following that, she decided to lay the foundation of BYJU’s along with her husband in 2011.

REVENUE MODEL

BYJU’s earns revenue in three ways: 

APPLICATION

The BYJU’s application after offering a free trial of 15 days, asks students to purchase the courses to continue learning through the application. The app offers different test series, courses, and much more to ensure holistic learning for students. 

ELECTRONIC TABLETS

The platform offers its users electronic tablets that they need to procure. The tablets contain relevant videos, quizzes, practice questions, test series, and other materials depending on the course chosen by the learner. 

CLASSROOM TEACHING

The third method of revenue generation of BYJU’s is classroom teaching but is restricted to only a few cities.

ACQUISITIONS

BYJU’s has brought a much-needed revolution in the entire education industry due to which it has won many awards and accolades and has garnered the attention of many investors from across the globe. Some of the noteworthy acquisitions by BYJU’s are Aakash Educational Services, WhiteHat Jr, Great Learning Pvt Ltd, Epic, Osmo, TutorVista, Edurite from Pearson.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

BrowserStack

Industry

Cloud Infrastructure and Software

Founders

Ritesh Arora & Nakul Aggarwal

Founding Year 2011 Investors

Insight Partners, Accel & Bond

With a vision to become the testing infrastructure for the internet, Browserstack was incepted in 2011. It is the world’s leading software testing company that powers two million tests every day across 15 global data centres. The platform provides developer teams of different companies instant access to a cloud platform that allows them to test their websites and mobile applications extensively so that they can release bug-free software faster.

In 2021, the platform raised $200 million in Series B funding at $4 billion from BOND, with participation from Insight Partners and Accel. It officially became a remote-first company in the same year.

Name

Cars24

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Gajendra Jangid, Mehul Agrawal, Ruchit Agarwal, Vikram Chopra

Founding Year 2015 Investors

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DST Global, Alpha Wave, Sequoia, SoftBank, Trifecta Capital

Name

CarDekho

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders Founding Year

Amit Jain, Anurag Jain

Name

Chargebee

2008

Industry

Fintech

Sequoia, HDFC Bank, LeapFrog Investment, CapitalG, Hillhouse Capital

Krish Subramanian, KP Saravanan, Rajaraman Founders Santhanam, Thiyagarajan Thiyagu

Investors

A car search venture, CarDekho is India’s biggest digital automotive solution provider.

Bridging the gap between the car buyers and sellers in the country, the company makes the experience of buyers and sellers of cars seamless and hassle-free. CarDekho has set its foot in over 30 countries. To facilitate the services, the company has tie-ups with 4000 car dealers and many financial institutions. CarDekho also acquired Carmudi, which is an online classified website in the Philippines.

Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia, Insight Venture Partners, Investors Tiger Global, Accel, Steadview Capital Management

Backed by the investors like Ratan Tata, Sequoia Capital and Hillhouse Capital, CarDekho in its Series E funding raised the funds of $250 million. In 2021, the company achieved the status of a unicorn.

Cars24, incepted in 2015, is a next-generation eCommerce platform that aims to revolutionise the way used cars are bought and sold across the globe. From one single office to expanding its operations across 182 major cities in India, Cars24 is gaining a larger share of the e-commerce market. It has turned a splintered used vehicle market into a streamlined tech-driven one. It is rapidly emerging as a global force in the auto industry, making the sale and purchase of used vehicles as easy as possible.

The company has already served over 4 lakh happy customers and aims to solve the problems of many more customers with continuous innovation, valuable relationships and more partnerships.

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Founding 2011 Year

Name

CoinDCX

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Neeraj Khandelwal, Sumit Gupta

Founding Year

2018

Investors

B Capital Group, Polychain, Bain Capital Ventures, Block.one

Chargebee is a company that helps software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses with its recurring billing and subscription management tools. The company aims to provide the businesses with best in class infrastructure. It provides different chargeable options to the customers so that they can choose according to their needs. Chargebee uses power-packed integrations such as Xero, Quickbooks, Slack, Avalara, and Salesforce to manoeuvre crucial workflows of its customers.

Chargebee operates from 4 official offices and 500 home offices in 21 time zones across the globe. The company offers its services to businesses of all sizes. Chargebee caters its services in 60 countries across the world. With trust and loyalty, the company has earned many reputed clients like Freshdesk, Linux Academy, Study.com, Zenchef, Whiteboard, Bitgym, MakeSpace and many more. In 2021 the revenue generation of the company grew by three folds. After that, the company raised the funds of $125 million funds in Series-G funding. The funding accumulated by this round helped the company to achieve the status of a unicorn.

India’s largest and safest platform for cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX has become the most valued name in the business industry. The company was founded by Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal in 2018. The platform allows its users to exchange various types of cryptocurrencies, and all types of trading taking into consideration their background, risk and frequency. The app introduces the DCX Learn and educates users about cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.

The four-year-old startup, CoinDCX has the highest number of crypto listed and it instantly converts fiat to crypto free of charge. The active users on the app are over 1 crore and $300 crore trading volume. CoinDCX enables customers to trade crypto using exchange liquidity. The fee charged by the company is the lowest for trading and withdrawal. CoinDCX is an ISO certified company and single-point access for crypto-based financial products backed by security and insurance.

CoinDCX is India’s first cryptocurrency startup to enter the unicorn club. The company is funded by reputed investors like B Capital Group, Polychain, Bain Capital Ventures, and Block. one.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Cure.fit

Industry

Healthtech

Founders

Ankit Nagori, Mukesh Bansal

Founding Year Investors

2016 Temasek Holdings, Accel, Tata Digital, Zomato, Ascent Capital

Name

CRED

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Kunal Shah

Emerging as India’s leading holistic health and wellness platform, Cure.Fit aims to address preventative healthcare measures through an amalgamation of fitness, mental well being, and nutrition. Cure.Fit application provides workout classes and tracks performance with its energy meter to allow users to compete with each other in real-time. Cure.Fit is divided into four segments namely Cult.Fit, Mind.Fit, Care.Fit, and Eat.Fit. It positions itself uniquely in the competitive landscape by providing its services in both, online and offline modes to direct its health philosophy via coaching, interaction, and delivery.

Founding Year 2018 Investors

Sequoia, Tiger Global, DST Global, Ribbit Capital, Alpha Wave

A Bengaluru based startup, CRED is a platform that rewards its customers for the timely payments of their credit card bills. CRED is a fintech platform that allows users to manage multiple cards with the analysis of their credit score. The app only allows users with a credit score of 750 or higher.

CRED introduced ‘The CRED App’, which is technologically advanced and safe to make payments. It collaborates with businesses to provide various rewards and offers to customers. And it also helps businesses to increase their visibility. In 2021, the company launched ‘CRED Mint’, a peer-to-peer lending feature that allows users to lend their money to trustworthy members.

The company is backed by an AI system to track the credit card payments; from the bill, due dates, and spending patterns to the usage of credit card statistics.

22 | BudBiz

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

CredAvenue

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Gaurav Kumar

Founding Year

2017 B Capital Group, Insight Venture Partners, Stride Ventures, Lightspeed

Investors

With the motto of Powering Credit, Powering Dream, Ambition & Growth, CredAvenue was founded in 2017. It is one of the best corporate debt solutions platforms that fulfils all debt needs. It reached the $1.3 billion valuation in March 2022 and became the fastest fintech Unicorn in India. Its products namely Co Lending, Loans, Pools, Bonds, and Supply Chain Finance aim to reshape the conventional lending mechanism and offer new ways of digital credit facilitation.

It is trusted by leading banking partners like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IndusInd Bank and is backed by marquee investors.

Name

CoinSwitch Kuber

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni, Vimal Sagar Tiwari

Founding Year 2017 Investors

Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Andreesen Horowitz, Coinbase, Tiger Global Management

One of the largest crypto exchanges in India, CoinSwitch Kuber is aiming to make money equal for all. The platform offers the trade of more than 80 cryptocurrencies in easy and simple steps. It allows the customers to start trading with only 100 rupees and facilitate any withdrawal facility. CoinSwitch Kuber is trusted by over 15 million users and carries out Rs 1,00,000 crores in trade.

The company has its users trade in more than 300 cryptocurrencies across the 160 countries in the world. CoinSwitch Kuber is India’s second unicorn startup in crypto. The company’s net worth crossed $1 billion after the funding round of $260 million in Series C funding.

Name

DealShare

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Rajat Shikhar, Sankar Bora, Sourjyendu Medda, Vineet Rao

Founding Year Investors

2018

Tiger Global, Alpha Wave, DST Global, Unilever, Kora

Name

Darwinbox

Industry

EnterpriseTech

Founders

Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti, Rohit Chennamaneni

Founding Year Investors

2015

TCV, Salesforce, Sequoia, Lightspeed Partners, ilabs, Endiya

Darwinbox is an HCM platform that helps businesses with SaaS platform that ensures the smooth processing of employees’ entire lifecycle. From hire to retirement, the company makes the process sharper, faster and simpler with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Darwinbox has marked its presence in more than 90 countries with 1.5 million users. The company employs over 700 personnel in 12 global offices. The clientele of the company includes large conglomerates and businesses such as Mahindra, TVS, Adani, Nivea, NutriAsia and many more. The company raised the funds of $72 million in the Series D round and entered the unicorn club.

A hyperlocal online buying platform, DealShare offers multi-category consumer products. Incepted in 2018, the company is headquartered in Bangalore and Karnataka. It is a social eCommerce Platform that offers a range of products from fashion, electronics, home care, grocery and many more. DealShare rewards the customers with discounts and coupons.

DealShare is soon extending its business in 200 cities in 20 states adding 50 million new customers. Within a short period of time, DealShare ventured into an operationally profitable business. It entered the list of the Indian unicorns in January 2022 by raising 165 million from top-notch investors like Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global.

BudBiz | The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022 |

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Delhivery

Industry

Logistics

Founders

Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua, Suraj Saharan

Founding Year

2011 SoftBank, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global, The Carlyle Group, Nexus Venture Partners

Investors

With a mission to enable customers to operate flexible supply chains at affordable costs, Delhivery was incepted in May 2011. It delivers an array of services such as last-mile delivery, reverse logistics, third party & transit warehousing, payment collection, vendor to customer shipping, vendor to warehouse shipping, and many more to list. As per the RedSeer Report, it was the largest and fastest-growing fully integrated platform in India by revenue in Fiscal Year 2021.

Since its inception, Delhivery has serviced more than 17000 pin codes. It works 24 x 7 with the help of 21 automated sort centres, 2521 direct delivery centres, 122 gateways, 93 fulfilment centres, and a professional and hard-working team of over 86000 people.

Name

Digit Insurance

Dream11

Industry

Name

Fintech

Industry

Media & Entertainment

Founders

Kamesh Goyal, Philip Varghese, Sriram Shankar, Vijay Kumar

Founders

Bhavit Sheth, Harsh Jain

Founding Year

2008

Investors

Steadview Capital, Tencent, Tiger Global, Falcon Edge

Founding Year 2017 Investors

A91 Partners, Fearing Capital, TVS Capital, FairFax

Digit Insurance is a general insurance company that provides a variety of insurance such as Bike Insurance, Health Insurance, Travel Insurance, Commercial Vehicle Insurance and many more.

Incepted in 2017, the company is backed by Fairfax Group. Digit Insurance makes the tedious and lengthy process of insurance hassle-free, simple and transparent. The company employs industry experts that provide the customer with the insurance according to their needs and wants. The insurance and expertise of the company are trusted by more than 2 Crore Indians.

Digit Insurance launched its Arogya Sanjeevani Policy which covers the treatment and hospitalization of the Covid-19 infected person. The company saw a growth of around 30% in the year 2020. This growth is largely contributed by covid insurance and fire insurance.

24 | BudBiz

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

India’s biggest fantasy sports platform, Dream11 actively engages the audience not just as a viewer but also as a participant. Founded in 2008

by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, the company introduced India with the concept of freemium fantasy cricket in 2012. Fantasy sport is now considered a ‘Game of Skill’ by the Supreme Court of India.

The majority of the audience of Dream11 belongs to the age group of 20 to 35 years of age and are sports enthusiasts. With more than 130 million users, this platform allows them to show their ‘Game of Skill’ and create their own team and play. They can earn rewards and prizes if their teams do well. The company allows the audience to play fantasy cricket, football, rugby, baseball, kabaddi, volleyball and many other games.

Name

Droom

Name

Druva

Industry

Ecommerce

Industry

EnterpriseTech

Founders

Sandeep Aggarwal, Rishabh Malik

Founders

Jaspreet Singh, Milind Borate, Ramani Kothandaraman

Founding Year 2014 Investors

Lightbox, Toyota Tsusho, Digital Garage, Beenext, Integrated Capital

Founded in 2014 by Sandeep Aggarwal, Droom provides a platform to enjoy the most pleasing automobile buying experience. Droom with its app and website allows customers to search and buy/sell according to their requirements.

It gives users the benefit to return the vehicle before making the full payment. All the vehicles come with a warranty of six months (up to 50 lakhs). The company has India’s largest collection of used and new vehicles. It has marked its presence in 1100 cities and served 1.5+ million customers happily.

Droom through its AI and data-driven platform connects the buyers, sellers and dealers of vehicles. The revenue earned by the company comes from commissions and subscriptions.

Name

Eruditus

Industry

Edtech

Founders

Ashwin Damera, Chaitanya Kalipatnapu

Founding Year

2010

Investors

SoftBank, Prosus, Sequoia, Leeds Illuminate, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

Founding Year Investors

2008 Sequoia, Nexus Venture Partners, Indian Angel Network

Druva is a SaaS solution platform that enables cyber, data and operational resilience. The company pioneers in streamlining data governance, data protection and resilience. It brings the public cloud data protection and management simple, scalable and secure. The trust Druva has built over the years, associates the company with some renowned names like Forever 21, Samsung, Delhivery, Merz Pharma, Chipotle, and Anglo-Eastern group.

Druva is a recognized industry leader that completes over 2.5 Billion backups annually.

Backed by renowned investors like Sequoia Capital, Riverwood Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and many more, the company entered the unicorn club in 2019.

Eruditus is a company that provides executive education programs for professionals. It aims to make business education more skillbased, high quality and affordable around the world. Eruditus partnered with over 50 universities including Harvard, Cambridge, UC Berkeley, IIT, IIM and many more. The company offers courses in Leadership & Management, Data Science & Technology, Digital Transformation and Banking & Finance. Along with these, Eruditus proposes different short programs also. The executive programs of the company educate 2,50,000 learners across 80 countries.

Since its inception in 2010, the company has marked its global presence in New Delhi, Singapore, Boston, Dubai, Palo Alto, Mexico, London, and New York. The company employs 1400 employees globally. Eruditus is a global leader in the professional education market. In 2021, Eruditus is India’s fourth edtech startup to become a unicorn. The company raised the funds of $650 million backed by reputed investors like Accel and SoftBank. This investment raised the net value of the company and made it India’s 3rd most valued edtech company.

BudBiz | The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022 |

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

EaseMyTrip

Industry

Travel Tech

Founders

Nishant Pitti, Rikant Pitti, Prashant Pitti

Founding Year 2008 Investors

Nomura

Name

ElasticRun

Industry

Logistics

Founders

Sandeep Deshmukh, Saurabh Nigam, Shitiz Bansal

Founding Year

2015

Investors

SoftBank, Kalaari Capital, Prosus, Norwest, Avataar Ventures

EaseMyTrip is a travel arrangement company that enables an array of services ranging from selling tickets, transportation, and tour packages for a diversified customer base. The company claimed that its website is user-friendly and supported on both iOS and Android. The company has a user base of over 11 million users.

ElasticRun is a B2B eCommerce platform for rural India. The company enables the network for brands to set foot in the rural markets and reach the customers. It ensures the low-cost reach of the various goods to the Indian rural market. ElasticRun has marked its presence in 26 states in India. It has helped more than 400 brands to enter the rural market of over 80k villages.

Incepted in 2008, EaseMyTrip employs more than 370 employees in 9 offices across the globe. Starting its operation in New Delhi India, the company expands its operations internationally in Singapore, Dubai, London, the USA, Thailand, and the Philippines. EaseMyTrip is one of the leading online travel portals in India. In 2021, the company drove into the unicorn club of India with over a $1 billion valuation.

‘No Capex’ and ‘Variable Cost’ network provides access to over 10 million stores. The clientele of the company includes Tata Consumer Products, Britannia, Godrej, Pepsico, Colgate, Cavin Kare, Dabur and many more. In Series E funding, ElasticRun raised the funds of $330 million from top-notch investors like SoftBank, Prosus and Goldman Sachs.

Name

FirstCry

Industry

E-commerce

Founders

Supam Maheshwari, Amitava Saha, Prashant Jadhav, Sanket Hattimattur

Founding Year Investors

26 | BudBiz

2010 TPG, Chiratae Ventures, Softbank, Vertex

India’s leading eCommerce platform for kids and babies shopping, FirstCry was founded in 2010. The platform offers an array of products including kids’ toys, clothes, diapers, skincare and many more. FirstCry is associated with over 6000 brands to provide 2,00,000 unique products to customers. The company has more than 400 stores across India.

In 2015, FirstCry signed Amitabh Bachchan as its Brand Ambassador. The company launched India’s biggest Parenting platform in 2017. The user base of the parenting platform is 13 million every month which engages 92 million viewers monthly. After raising the funds of $296 million in the Series E round, FirstCry became a unicorn in 2020.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Freshworks is a Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup that provides a software solution including sales CRM software, recruitment tools, customer-support helpdesk and others.

It originated in Chennai by Girish Mathrubootham, Vijay Shankar and Shan Krishnasamy in 2010. The headquarter of the company is located in San Mateo, California and has its branches in 13 global locations. The company felt the need for freshness in 2017 and hence rebranded itself to call itself ‘Freshworks.’

Name

Freshworks

Industry

EnterpriseTech

Founders

Girish Mathrubootham, Shan Krishnasamy, Vijay Shankar

Founding Year

2010

Investors

Accel, Steadview Capital, Sequoia, Tiger Global Management, Capital G

The company offers its services to all kinds and sizes of the business and helps them to acquire customers and engages them. The core products of the company that was launched for the startup in 2021 are Freshmarketer, Freshsales, and Freshdesk. Freshworks claims that around 20% of the global unicorns use its products. The clientele of Freshworks includes prestigious companies like NHS, Honda, Hugo Boss, Toshiba, and Cisco. Freshworks was listed in the list of unicorns and was the first Indian startup to be listed in the US markets (Nasdaq).

Name

Fractal Analytics

Industry

Analytics, Artificial Intelligence

Founders

Ramakrishna Reddy, Srikanth Velamakanni

Fractal Analytics helps companies power every decision with Artificial Intelligence, Data Engineering and Deep Analytics.

The company offers its expertise to assist CEOs and other senior executives of the companies in strategic decision making, investment decisions, and revenue growth management. Fractal Analytics is associated with business partners renowned in their respective fields including Google Cloud, Microsoft, Intelligence Node, Opoint Technology, and Oracle.

Founding Year

2000

Investors

Apax Partners, TA Associates, TPG

The company practices CSR to provide basic and quality education in slums and other underprivileged areas. Fractal Analytics marked its presence in more than 16 global locations and employs 3000 employees. After raising the funds of $360 million from Capital Asia, Fractal Analytics achieved the status of a unicorn in 2022.

BudBiz | The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022 |

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Owing to India’s rising state of the middle-class community, and expanding internet users, the eCommerce industry is booming. One of the major platforms that is grabbing a much larger share of the e-commerce industry is Flipkart. With a commitment to transform eCommerce in India via investments in made in India technology innovations, a diverse category landscape, and a top-notch supply chain, Flipkart was incepted in 2007.

Name

Flipkart

Industry

Ecommerce

Binny Bansal, Sachin Founders Bansal Founding 2007 Year Walmart, Tencent, Investors SoftBank, Tiger Global, Naspers

Flipkart, since its inception, is maximizing for customers, stakeholders, and the planet. It has a customer base of over 350 million, and product coverage of over 150 million across more than 80 categories. It focuses on generating direct and indirect employment and a commitment to empowering generations of entrepreneurs. The products offered by the company are of good quality and affordable, which attracts the majority of middle-class income people. It also provides discounts on products and Cash on delivery (COD) facilities.

It was started as an online bookstore and then expanded to electronics, homecare essentials, lifestyle products, groceries and many more.

The major competitor of Flipkart is Amazon’s Indian subsidiary and the domestic company Snapdeal. It has ‘neck to neck’ competition with Amazon India in the sale of electronics and mobile phones. Other competitors include Myntra, eBay, Etsy, among others.

CHALLENGES When Flipkart took birth, the market was not that vibrant at that time and e-commerce was a new phenomenon. But still, a risk that was taken in 2007 is yielding great results today. The major problem that Flipkart faced in the initial years of its establishment was online payments because people in India were not familiar with the concept of online payment and were reluctant to make an online payment to a virtual store, due to fear of loss of money.

Name

Games24x7

Industry

Gaming

Founders

Bhavin Pandya, Trivikraman Thampy

Founding Year

2006

Investors

Malabar Investments, Raine, Tiger Global, Das & Co

Founded in 2006 by the founder duo, Games24x7 is an online gaming platform that spans skill and casual games. The platform launched RummyCircle in 2009 which is the first online gaming platform in India.

RummyCircle, My11Circle and U Games are the various successful gaming platforms launched

by Games24x7. With the help of robust technology, Games24x7 ensures the smoothest gaming experience for the users.

The customized player's journey, user interface and technology attract its customers.

My11Circle is the sponsor of the IPL team Lucknow Super Giants. In 2022, the company became a unicorn, after raising the funds of $75 million led by the investors like Tiger Global and Malabar India.

To solve this issue, the founders introduced a ‘Cash on Delivery’ service to build the confidence of customers. To ensure the timely delivery of products to the customers, it improved its supply chain system.

US-based retail Walmart acquired Flipkart in 2018 by holding the majority of shares (77%) in the company.

The Company enjoys booming sales during the festive season. In 2021, more than 3 lakh new customers were associated during the Big Billion Days.

Name

Groww

Industry

Fintech

ACQUISITIONS BY FLIPKART The e-commerce industry is highly competitive. It has witnessed many mergers and acquisitions for business expansion and revenue maximization.

Founders

Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal, and Neeraj Singh

Founding Year

2017

The major acquisitions by Flipkart include Myntra, eBay India, Letsbuy(dot)com, Appiterate, FX Mart, WeRead, Mime360, chakpak(dot)com, PhonePe, Jabong, and ngpay to name a few. It has also acquired Snapdeal at a cost of $950 million. It has also taken over 10 games that Mech Mocha developed in the course of five years, which includes Carrom, Snake and Ladders, Cricket, and Ludo.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Investors

Sequoia, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, Tiger Global

Name

GlobalBees

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders Founding Year

Nitin Agarwal, Deepak Khetan

Investors

2021

SoftBank, Chiratae Ventures, Lightspeed, PremjiInvest

GlobalBees is a D2C eCommerce retail platform.

It provides support to merchants from various sectors such as electronics, cosmetics, personal care, fashion and others. It was founded in 2021

by Supam Maheshwari and Nitin Agarwal. The company runs on the Thrasio-style business model. Globalbees set its foot in more than 600 cities and is headquartered in New Delhi.

GlobalBees acquired the brands like Absorbia, Healthy Hey, The Butternut Co, Rey Naturals, Strauss, and Prolixr. The company raised 4 rounds of funding till date and raised $290.7 million for the company. In a very short span of time, GlobalBees drove into the unicorn club with a net valuation of over $1.1 billion.

An investing platform, Groww helps users to find the best investment options in mutual funds. Groww is the fintech platform that makes the tedious processes of investment simple, transparent and paperless. Incepted in 2017, the company has a customer base of over 30 Million with 500+ team members. Groww offers its expertise in Mutual Funds, US Stocks, IPO, Stocks and other available investment options. Millions of investors are associated with the company because of its transparency, and fast and easy ways. Groww ensures the safety and security of the investors’ data and information with cutting-edge technology.

The app allows the customer to invest easily and safely. And they can also keep track of the investment. The CEO of Google, Satya Nadella is the advisor and investor of the company. The company is also backed by other world-class investors like Ribbit Capital, Sequoia, and Tiger Global. In 2021, Groww raised the funds of $83 Million which led the company to achieve unicorn status.

BudBiz | The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022 |

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100

INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Good Glamm

Industry

Cosmetics

Founders

Darpan Sanghvi, Priyanka Gill, Naiyya Saggi

Founding Year

2015

Investors

SoftBank Vision Fund, Qualcomm Ventures

Good Glamm is a D2C beauty brand that is flourishing in India.

The company offers a variety of beauty products and cosmetic makeup items. The beauty products by MyGlamm are skinfriendly, 100% cruelty-free and dermatologically tested. The products range from 800 SKUs in makeup, skincare, and hair care products. Good Glamm rewards the customers with discount offers and free makeup products on the purchase. The products of MyGlamm are available in both online and offline modes. It has marked its presence in 100 cities of India with 20,000+ offline stores.

In 2020, Good Glamm acquired PoPxo - an online community of women to shop, read, watch and connect. It has more than 60 million active users and 100 million monthly views on the videos.

As a consolidation move, Good Glamm acquired ‘The Moms Co’, ‘ScoopWhoop’, ‘St. Botanica’ and ‘Miss Malini Entertainment’. The MyGlamm named Shraddha Kapoor as the brand ambassador who is also an investor in the company. Good Glamm Group turned into a unicorn after raising the funding of $150 million from Prosus Ventures and Warburg Pincus.

Gupshup is a leading conversational messaging platform in India, US and UK. The platform enables businesses to engage with their customers through conversational messages. The company offers services that include SMS, IP Messaging, Emails, and USSD to the various industries.

Name

Gupshup

Industry

EnterpriseTech

Founders

Beerud Sheth, Dr Milind Agarwal, Rakesh Mathur

Founding Year

2004

Investors

Tiger Global, Think Investments

30 | BudBiz

It provides a single messaging API for more than 30 channels and AI to enhance the conversational experience of the users. In 2014, GupShup launched its app ‘Teamchat’. It was the first app that has smart messaging capabilities.

GupShup is the solution provider for apps like Whatsapp, Viber, Instagram, Telegram, and Google’s Business Messaging. The company has a customer base of over 44,000 global brands that include reputed names such as Zomato, Vogue, Holiday Inn, Reliance Jio, LinkedIn, Unilever, and many more. It raised the funds of $100 million in Series F round and entered the list of Indian unicorns.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

Hasura

Industry

Software

Founders

Rajoshi Ghosh and Tanmay Gopal

Founding Year

2017

Investors

Greenoaks, Lightspeed, Nexus Venture Partners, Strive

Name

Hike

Industry

Media & Entertainment

Founders

Kavin Bharti Mittal

Hasura is a platform that ensures an array of solutions for web applications. The Hasura GraphQL engines provide the customers with high-performance, real-time and instant data solutions. Hasura is an open-sourced platform since 2018, and since then thousands of developers used the company’s services. It enables the support for the databases including PostgresQL, SQL Server, and Big Query.

Hasura marked its global presence with offices in San Francisco and Bangalore. The company is backed by top-notch investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Vertex Ventures. The company raised the funds of $100 million in the funding round led by Greenokas Capital. Hasura turned into a unicorn in 2022.

Founding Year 2012 Investors

Greycroft, Eight Roads, Ignition, Meritech, PremjiInvest, B Capital Group

Incepted in 2012, Hike was the first messaging platform company in India. It introduced alluring features in its app including reaction stickers, offline messaging and Free SMS. Although the company failed to earn profits and the app was removed from the Google play store and App store.

The valuation of the company crossed the $1 billion mark in 2016 making it to the list of unicorns. The company raised a total of 7 rounds of funding from renowned investors including SoftBank, Sean Rad, Tencent Holdings, and Tiger Global Management. In 2020, the company launched HikeLand, allowing users to hang out in a virtual environment. Now, Hike is aiming toward creating a social future with Gaming, Crypto and Web 3.0.

Name

Icertis

Industry

Enterprisetech

Founders

Monish Darda, Samir Bodas

Founding Year 2009 Investors

B Capital Group, Ignition Partners, Eight Roads Ventures, Greycroft, Meritech

A cloud-based enterprise, Icertis provides Contract Management Software that transforms static documents into a strategic advantage.

The company envisions transforming the foundation of eCommerce with its clear contract management software. Icertis is trusted by global brands for its bold vision, expertise and commitment. The company processed more than 10 million contracts in over 90 countries and 40+ languages.

The company was awarded ‘Gartner Magic Quadrant 2021 Leader’, ‘2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year’, and Entrepreneur’s ‘Most Enterprising Business 2020’. Icertis raised the funds of $115 million from US firm Greycroft and PremjiInvest. This round of funding makes Icertis the second most valued SaaS company. It became a unicorn in 2021.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Infoedge

Industry

Consumer Services

Founders

Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Temasek Holdings, Lightbox

An online classified company, InfoEdge is fundamentally in the matching business. The company started with the recruitment classifieds and with time, it expanded its operation in diverse fields such as matrimony, real estate, and education. The companies that come under the umbrella and are renowned in the industry include Naukri.com, 99acres, Jeevansathi.com, and Shiksha.com.

Infoedge has marked its presence with a network of 62 offices in 43 cities in India. With innovation, creativity, and talented leadership teams InfoEdge is setting benchmarks in the industry of premier online classifieds. The company holds its share in 23 online companies, out of which 2 companies i.e. Zomato and Policybazaar have turned into a unicorn.

Name

Infra Market

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Souvik Sengupta, Aaditya Sharda

Founding Year Investors

32 | BudBiz

2016 Tiger Global, Accel, SoftBank, Innoven Capital, Alteria Capital

InMobi

Name

Innovaccer

Industry

Enterprisetech

Healthtech

Founders

Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta, Mohit Saxena, Naveen Tewari

Industry Founders

Sandeep Gupta, Abhinav Shashank, Kanav Hasija

Founding Year

2014

Founding Year

Founding Year 1995 Investors

Name

Investors

2007

Lightbox, SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins, Mumbai Angels Network

Founded in 2007, InMobi is a platform that makes mobile advertising more user-friendly and hassle-free. The company was initially founded as mKhoj, an SMS based search and monetization business. In 2009, the company saw the potential in the mobile advertising business and rebranded the company to InMobi. Started with 8 people, now the company has offices across the world. InMobi helps the customers in brand awareness, remarketing, and monetization through mobile advertising. Glance which is owned by InMobi become unicorn in less than 2 years after raising the funds of $145 million from investors including Google and Mithril Capital.

InMobi acquired Appsumer, Metaflows, Appbistro, Ropso and 6 other companies as the consolidation move. Backed by top-notch investors like SoftBank, Shrpalo, and UC-RNT Fund, the company was the first-ever business that turned into a unicorn in India.

Infra Market is a company that is changing the way construction and real estate procure material for their projects. The company leverages technology to provide the best Construction Solutions. The products offered by the company are Ready Mix Concrete, Construction Materials, Flyash, Lightweight Concrete and many more. On the Manufacturer’s side, the company ensures higher capacity utilization and better customer reach while on the customer’s side, it aims to address concerns about pricing transparency, fragmented vendor base and inefficient logistics.

Running on the business model of B2B and retail outlets, the company is associated with reputed companies like Phoneix Marketcity, Tata Steel, Ambuja Cement, ACC Concrete Rizvi Builders, Hiranandani Group and many more to list. The company has its centres all across the country and is headquartered in Mumbai.

After raising the funds of $100 million in Series C funding from investors like Tiger Global, Accel, Nexus Venture Partners, and others, Infra Market raised to the unicorn status.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Investors

Sequoia, 500 startups, Capital Group, Microsoft's Venture Fund

Innovaccer is a leading platform that works towards making healthcare more efficient and effective by leveraging technology.

The aim of the company is to make healthcare services accessible and useful for everyone. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices globally in India, the United States, and the Middle East.

The company provides its service in simplifying the complex data from all points of care. The products and services are used in 500 locations. The company is associated with 24 Million+ patients on the health cloud and generated $600 million of savings. America’s esteemed healthcare providers including Banner Health, Mercy One, Hartford HealthCare, Sanitas Medical Center and many others are associated with Innovaccer. Innovaccer has become India’s first HealthTech startup to enter the unicorn club.

Name

LEAD School

Name

Lenskart

Industry

Edtech

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Smita Deorah, Sumeet Mehta

Founders

Peyush Bansal, Amit Chaudhary, Sumeet Kapahi, Ramneek Khurana

Founding Year 2012 Investors

GSV Ventures, Westbridge Capital, Elevar Equity

Founding Year 2010 Investors

SoftBank, PremjiInvest, Alpha Wave, Kedaara

LEAD is an edtech company that is committed to bringing innovation to the education system.

LEAD works with the aim of transforming school education by allowing students national level exposure, International standard education and school management solutions. The company ensures high-quality affordable education for the children. The teachers at LEAD School are highly educated & upskilled and provide personalised attention to students.

The fastest-growing eyewear company, Lenkart’s aim is to give India a vision. Incepted in 2010, the company brought the revolution to the eyewear industry. Lenskart offers an array of products including prescription eyewear, contact lenses and sunglasses. The company provides great quality eyewear products made with the latest technology and robots. It has more than 5000 styles of eyewear for everyone; men, women and children.

The company has set its foot in over 20 States with 3,000+ schools. These schools have a family of more than 25,000 teachers and 12,00,000 students. In 2022, LEAD School achieved unicorn status. It becomes the sixth edtech company in India to turn into a unicorn.

Lenskart eyewear is available in both online and offline stores. The company has a customer base of more than 1,00,000 customers a month combining online business, physical stores and ‘home eye check-up services’. The company raised the funds of $220 million in the fresh round of funding.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Licious

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Abhay Hanjura, Vivek Gupta, Varun Sadana Vertex, 3one4 Capital, Mayfield, Temasek

The company ensures the fast delivery of the products and claims to deliver fresh products in 90-120 minutes. Licious has 90% repeat consumption and serves over 1 million orders monthly. After raising the funds of $52 million, Licious walked into the unicorn club.

Mamaearth

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Varun and Ghazal Alagh

Founding Year

2016

Investors

34 | BudBiz

Sofina, Sequoia Capital, Fireside Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners

Industry

Consumer Services

Founders

Anuj Srivastava, Ramakant Sharma, Shagufta Anurag

Investors

The Bengaluru based startup, Licious is a company that delivers fresh meat, eggs and chicken online. The company provides hygienic, fresh and quality meat products.

Founded in 2015 by the founder duo, the company offers raw meat, marinades and ready-to-eat categories. Over the years, the company has grown more than 300% and has served over 3 million packs of fresh meat to consumers across India.

Name

LivSpace

Founding Year 2014

Founding Year 2015 Investors

Name

KKR, Goldman Sachs, TPG, Helion Venture, Bessemer Venture Partners

Asia’s largest and fastest-growing home interiors and renovation platform, LivSpace connects the designers, brands, and manufacturers of the home interior industry. Established in 2014, LivSpace is now the trusted name for home interior design and renovation. The company designs everything including offices, living rooms, bedrooms, modular kitchens, balconies, wardrobes and many more.

Since its inception, the company has furnished over 35,000 homes in 4 countries. It sells over 7.5 SKUs and designs more than 1,25,000 rooms. LivSpace raised the funds of $180 million from the Series F round led by the investors including Jungle Ventures, Peugeot Investors, IKEA and others. This funding increased the net valuation leading the company to the list of Indian unicorns.

Mamaearth is a brand that provides an array of products that are natural, toxin-free and skin-friendly. The company was founded in 2016 by the couple duo when they were expecting their first child. After the rigorous research, the founder couple found that most baby products contain toxins. Therefore, they decided to create products that are safe and toxins free.

The company offers a range of baby products, skin & beauty products, and hair care products. Mamaearth also plants trees for environmental safety. Every time the consumer makes a purchase, the company plants a tree. Till now, the company has planted over 3,00,000 trees. With a valuation of $1.2 billion, Mamaearth joined the elite group of unicorns in 2022.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

MakeMyTrip

Industry

Traveltech

Founders

Deep Kalra, Keyur Joshi, Rajesh Magow, Sachin Bhatia

Founding Year

2000

Investors

Sierra Ventures, Tiger Global, Helion Venture

Name

Meesho

Industry

E-commerce

Founders

Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal

Founding Year Investors

2015 SoftBank, Sequoia, Elevation

Catering to the needs of travellers, MakeMyTrip is a one-stopshop for all travel needs. Founded in 2000 by Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip is the online leading travel company in India.

The company offers its services by providing domestic and international holiday packages, booking airline, railway or bus tickets, and reserving hotel rooms. Its services also include Visa processing and third party travel insurance. The company signed Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt as its Brand Ambassadors in 2016.

In 2017, the company announced its tagline ‘Dil Toh Roaming Hai’ and attracted a lot of attention from the customers.

Focusing on the B2C model, the company introduced MyBiz for corporate travel-related services.

MakeMyTrip is associated with the brands like Goibibo, RedBus, and Ixigo to ensure seamless service to its users. The two-decade-long journey of MakeMyTrip is funded by the sterling investors like Tiger Fund, Helion Venture Partners, and Sierra Ventures which led the company to enlist in the unicorn businesses. With the help of technology, the company constantly works to make the travel experience hassle-free and enjoyable for a customer.

Meesho is the fastest growing eCommerce platform that aims to make eCommerce accessible to all. It helps small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to connect with customers online.

The primary users of Meesho are those sellers who don't own any shops and sell their products through social media.

Meesho app enables the customers to shop hassle-free and smooth. The app provides both the options to pay online and cash on delivery.

The variety of products available on Meesho ranges from clothing, accessories, cosmetics, furniture and many more. In 2015, Meesho started with the name ‘FASHNEAR’, but sooner the founder duo felt the need to change the name to connect with the customers. By the end of 2015, the company changed its name to Meesho.

Meesho helps 15 million+ entrepreneurs to start their businesses without any investment. The company has successfully delivered orders from over 100K registered suppliers in 5000+ cities across India. Meesho offers a wide range of products and gives more reason to shop online. It delivers affordable products right at the doorstep.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

MapmyIndia

Industry

Enterprisetech

Founders

Rakesh Verma

Founding Year

1995

Investors

Lightbox, Morgan Stanley, Nexus Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs, Nomura

MapmyIndia is a company that builds digital maps, API, GPS navigation and GIS solutions. Founded in 1995, the company has pioneered digital mapping in India. The maps and field surveys by the company are accurate and fully reliable.

MapmyIndia is headquartered in New Delhi and employs over 700 people all over India. The company mapped more than 6.29 million km of road, 17.79 million places and 14.51 million addresses are captured.

It also launched the covid 19 dashboard in 2021. It helps in mapping containment zones and testing & treatment centres across the various states in India. In 2021, the company got listed on the Indian Stock Exchange.

Name

MENSA Brands

Industry

E-commerce

Founders

Ananth Narayanan, Pawan Kumar Dasaraju, Aniket Nikumb

Founding Year 2021 Investors

Alpha Wave, Norwest, Accel

Mensa is a platform that partners with the right founders to grow a digital business. Leveraging the technology to integrate sales, orders and supply platforms, the company offers its expertise in eCommerce, technology, marketing and demand planning. Mensa helps businesses in enhancing brand acquisition with Machine Learning and Big Data. It helps in analysing the data and identifying the right brands.

Mensa is aiming to grow rapidly in the Home, Beauty, Personal Care and Apparel verticles.

The company runs on the Thrasio-style business model. After six months of operations, Mensa crossed the mark of a $1 billion valuation. The company became the fastest startup to turn into a unicorn.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

Mindtickle

Industry

Enterprise Software

Founders

Deepak Diwakar, Krishna Depura, Nishant Mungali

Founding Year 2011 Investors

SoftBank, Accel, NEA, Qualcomm Ventures

The market-leading sales readiness platform, Mindtickle bridges the knowledge and skill gaps faced by the customer-facing teams.

The company offers solutions to define excellence, align content, and optimise behaviour in employees for the growth of the organisation.

The trust Mindtickle has built over the years can be seen in its clientele. World-class companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Wipro, Infoblox, Cipla, Factomart and Splunk trusted Mindtickle for sales readiness services.

The excellence of the company is acknowledged by many of the Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies. In the Series E funding round that was led by SoftBank Vision Fund, the company raised the funds of $100 million. This round of funding drove Mindtickle to become an Indian unicorn.

Name

MobiKwik

Industry

Fintech

Name

Mobile Premier League

Founders

Bipin Preet Singh, Upasana Taku, Chandan Joshi

Industry

Media & Entertainment

Founders

Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra

Founding Year 2009 Investors

Sequoia, Brand Capital International, American Express Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, Trifecta Capital

One of the largest mobile wallets and fintech companies, MobiKwik is a platform that makes digital payments convenient and user-oriented. It enables the customers to ‘Buy Now and Pay Later’ (BNPL). Since its inception in 2009, the company has expanded its use cases including bill payments, food delivery, retail & Kirana stores and online shopping.

MobiKwik is leveraging technology for safe and secure online payments. MobiKwik is modelled on P2P payments via the Unified Payment Interface. The company has the user base of 101 million registered users and 3 million eCommerce & retail biller partners. Ahead of the IPO, MobiKwik entered the list of unicorns crossing the $1 billion mark of net valuation.

Name

Moglix

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Rahul Garg

Founding Year 2015 Investors

General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, Mastercard

Founding Year 2018 Investors

Sequoia, RTP Global, Times Internet, MDI Ventures

Mobile Premier League (MPL) is one of the largest skill gaming platforms. Founded in 2018, the company offers eSports and mobile gaming platforms including a variety of games such as fantasy sports, arcade games, action games and many more. The MPL app is available both on Android and iOS. Users can download free games, play with real players and win cash prizes. The app is safe and completely legal to earn real monetary rewards.

In 2019, MPL signed Virat Kohli as the company’s Brand Ambassador. The company has a user base of over 9 crores across India, Indonesia and the U.S. MPL became the second gaming startup to join the unicorn club in India.

Incepted in 2015 by Rahul Garg, Moglix is one of Asia’s largest growing and fastest-growing B2B platforms. The company leveraging technology provides its services in procurement, supply chain financing, distribution and other requirements of manufacturing services. Moglix helps businesses to increase their efficiency by digitising the procurement and supply chain. The company has offices located in India, US, Singapore and UK. Currently, the company provides its services to more than 3000 manufacturing companies and 5,00,000 SKUs in 50+ categories.

Moglix runs on the business model of the B2B supply chain. Around 97% of the revenue generated by the company comes from the sales of industrial equipment and supplies. It is backed by top-notch investors like Falcon Edge, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Ratan Tata and Ward Ferry. With the investment of $120 million from Series E funding, Moglix made its space in the unicorn list of India. The company was also named “Technology Fast 50” by Deloitte’s 2020 for the third consecutive time.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Mu Sigma

Industry

Analytics, IT

Founders

Dhiraj Rajaram, Ambiga Subramanian

Founding Year 2004 Investors

Mastercard, General Atlantic, Sequoia, FTV Capital

Mu Sigma is the largest pure-play data analytics firm that offers data science solutions. The company accelerates the journey of businesses from data to decisions. The company has a variety of platforms for different services with a Man-machine ecosystem, Software, Processes and innovation labs. Mu Sigma solves many problems with a ‘New Art of Problem Solving’.

Over the years, the company has earned many reputed clients. Mu Sigma is associated with 140+ Fortune 500 companies. It is recognized

by Walmart as their Supplier of the Year and Prefered Analytics Partner by Microsoft. In 2016, Fortune named the company a billion-dollar Startup. Mu Sigma is among those rare Indian unicorn startups that are profitable consistently for the past few years.

Name

NoBroker

Industry

PropTech, Real State

Founders

Akhil Gupta, Amit Kumar Agarwal, Saurabh Garg

Founding Year 2013 Investors

Tiger Global Management, General Atlantic, MOORE Ventures, Rocketship.vc, BEENEXT

A disruptive brokerage free property search portal, NoBroker is connecting property buyers and sellers through a single platform. The company is eliminating the asymmetry in the real estate market caused by the brokers.

NoBroker offers a variety of services that include verified brokerage free property, online rent agreement, home loans and Packers & Movers services.

NoBroker is currently serving over 30 lakh customers monthly and 2 lakh new listings per month. The company employs 2000 dedicated professionals to serve its clients all across the country. In 2021, NoBroker became the first Proptech startup in India to turn into a unicorn.

One of the most famous eCommerce platforms for cosmetics, Nykaa has accumulated the trust of customers with its products and services. What started as an online cosmetic brand, has spread its wings in both online and offline mode over the years. Incepted in 2012 by Falguni Nayar, Nykaa is the first women-led brand that raised an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of USD 715 million. The company entered the prestigious club of Unicorns in March 2020. It deals in over 2500 brands and 5 lakh products in online beauty and fashion retail.

Name

Nykaa

Industry

E-commerce

Founders Falguni Nayar Founding 2012 Year Steadview Capital, Fidelity, Investors TPG, Lighthouse

Nykaa is a one-stop shop for all cosmetic and personal care products. The offline stores of Nykaa are in three different formats - Nykaa Luxe, On Trend and Kiosks. ‘Nykaa Luxe’ offers its products and services in luxury and premium brands like Huda Beauty, Dior, Estee Lauder, Jo Malone London and Versace. Its ‘On Trend’ items are confined to trending and fashionable brands. ‘Nykaa Kiosks’ are the omnichannel brand’s latest retail concept.

In addition to this, Nykaa provides expertise in beauty and fashion through its videos on hair and makeup tutorials, how-to videos, and e-beauty magazine. With the tagline of ‘Your Beauty, Our Passion’, Nykaa caters for every beauty and wellness need.

MISSION OF NYKAA The vision and mission of the beauty & wellness brand is to inspire and enable each person to thrive in their own uniqueness via creating a community. It tries its best to cater to every lifestyle need, by giving choice, inspiration, authenticity and convenience to each consumer. The mission statement of the brand is: "To create a world where our consumers have access to a finely curated, authentic assortment of products and services that delight and elevate the human spirit. The vision reads, “Bring inspiration and joy to people, everywhere, every day.”

ACQUISITIONS

Name

ofBusiness

Industry

E-commerce

Asish Mohapatra, Bhuvan Gupta, Nitin Jain, Ruchi Kalra, Vasant Sridhar Founding Year 2015 Falcon Edge Capital, SoftBank, Tiger Global, Investors Creation Investments Capital Management Founders

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OfBusiness is a new age fintech startup that provides procurement and financing solutions to SMEs (Small and medium-Sized Enterprises). Established in 2015, it is a B2B commerce platform that helps SMEs with over 100 categories of product categories.

It provides quality raw materials at affordable prices and logistic support for timely delivery.

Nykaa has acquired five companies till date, namely Nudge Wellness, Kica, Pipa Bella, Dot & Key Wellness, and 20Dresses. It has recently announced the acquisition of three beauty and wellness brands which includes the acquisition of a 60 per cent stake in Nudge Wellness for Rs. 3.6 crore. It has also acquired Kica, an Indian activewear brand, for Rs. 4.51 crore. Another brand in which the company has acquired a stake is Earth Rhythm at a consideration of Rs 41.65 crores.

With the tagline ‘Spurring Small and Medium to Large’, the company has served more than 35 countries and has 7,00,000+ registered SMEs. Other than the primary commerce operation, the company earns its revenue through its lending vertices and SaaS business.

MEET THE FOUNDER

The company gets its funding from the investors like SoftBank, Matrix Partners, Zodius Capital, Falcon Edge and Tiger Global.

With a valuation of $1.5 billion, OfBusiness became a unicorn in 2021.

Falguni Nayar is a name recognized by almost everyone today. Her name is listed on various boards like Aviva Insurance Board, and Dabur India. She also serves as an independent member of the Tata Motors Board.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Falguni Nayar, the face behind Nykaa holds a Masters degree in Business Administration in Finance from IIT Ahmedabad. She joined Kotak Mahindra Capital Company after completing her graduation. She served the bank for 18 years and decided to resign from the company to live her entrepreneurial dream.

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India’s first and largest ride-hailing company, Ola was founded in 2010 by two IIT graduates, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. The company provides mobility solutions to customers by connecting them to the drivers through the Ola app. The variety of vehicles like bikes, auto-rickshaws, metered taxis and cabs allow customers to choose their ride mode according to their convenience.

Name

Ola Electric

Name

Ola Cabs

Industry

Transport Tech

Name

Open

Industry

Transport Tech

Founders

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Bhavish Aggarwal & Ankit Bhati

Ankit Jain, Anand Shah & Bhavish Aggarwal

Founding Year 2017

Founders

Ajeesh Achuthan, Anish Achuthan, Deena Jacon, Mabel Chacko

Founding 2010 Year Ola serves millions of people in more than 250 cities across India, New SoftBank, Tiger Global, Zealand, UK and Australia. It employs over 1.5 million driver-partners to Tencent, Temasek, facilitate its services to consumers. In 2015, Ola acquired TaxiForSure to Investors Steadview Capital upscale its business model.

Management The list of Ola investors includes some big names like SoftBank, Tiger Global, Steadview Capital, Tencent and Temasek. After raising funds from different investors in Series E&F funding, Ola entered the list of Unicorns.

MEET THE LEADERS

The Founders of the company, Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal are tech genius, hailing from IIT Bombay.

Bhavish Aggarwal graduated in B.Tech Computer Science from IIT Bombay. Earlier, he was associated with Microsoft Research in Bangalore. He is now Co-Founder and CEO of Ola. Another tech genius, Ankit Bhati is the Co-Founder and CTO of the company. He heads the technical aspects and departments of the company to ensure a quick, convenient and smooth experience. He gained his technical experience from various freelance projects in Wilcom and QED42 but soon left his job to launch his own startup.

SERVICES OFFERED

The company offers a variety of services in three different options to opt from according to the customers’ needs:

Investors

SoftBank, Tiger Global, Temasek, Matrix Partners, Alpha Wave, Bank of Baroda

In 2017, Ola launched its electric scooter and brought a revolution in the automotive industry. Leading the electric vehicle industry in India, the company launched the Ola scooter with a top speed that goes from 0 to 40 km/h in 3.0 seconds. The scooters are available in 10 exciting colours, large boot space and iconic headlamp.

Ola FutureFactory has an annual production capacity of 10 million scooters. Over 3000 robotic arms ensure the safety, quality and precision of AI-driven continuous optimization. In 2019, Ola Electric drove into the Indian unicorn club. In just a few years of the company’s operations, the net worth crossed the $5 billion mark.

 City Taxi The City taxis complete the daily need of commuters to travel within the city. It provides 24/7 service that is affordable, and convenient and has a wide range of options including Ola Share, Ola Micro, Prime Sedan, and Prime SUV.  Outstation The company also enables the services for intercity travel. The customer can book a one-way trip or round fare trips according to their travel needs. The company offers intercity travel in more than 90 cities and 500 one way routes. Customers can book upto 7 days in advance for safe intercity rides.  Rentals Ola provides cabs on rentals with hourly packages. The customer can book a cab for an hour or so, according to the need. Rentals packages are available starting from 1 hour and can be extended upto 12 hours.

Ola also offers its supplemented services by its electric vehicle i.e., Ola Electric which aims towards providing employment opportunities to India’s Youth. The company plans to build mobility for the next billion Indians.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

Oxyzo

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Asish Mohapatra, Ruchi Kalra

Founding Year 2016

Investors

Alpha Wave, Matrix Partners, Creation Investments Capital Management, Tiger Global, Norwest

Founding Year 2017 Investors

Temasek, Beenext, 3one4 capital, Trifecta Capital

Asia’s first NeoBanking platform, Open provides the financial platform for SMEs and Startups.

The company provides services in banking Payments, accounting, expense management & taxes on a single platform. The specially designed Open Business account and VISA card cater for the unique needs of businesses.

Revolutionizing the SMEs and startups banks, Open serves more than 15,00,000 businesses and processes the transaction of $24 billion annually. The company helps the businesses with keeping the track of payable and receivable accounts, generating cash flow, categorising the income & expenses and third partying accounting. Open is the 100th entrant in the list of Indian unicorns.

Oxyzo is a Financial services company that provides its expertise in the business needs of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Oxyzo is a financial arm of the company, OfBusiness.

The company offers the credit solution to SMEs business for their expansion, increasing revenue, and ameliorating the profit margins.

Oxyzo serves more than 3000 businesses in India disbursing 4000+ crores per annum and has AUM worth 2000+ crores. The company provides the loan at the minimum interest rate of 1.5% p.m. It also offers customised credit solutions for all sizes of businesses. Oxyzo is among those few companies that turned into a unicorn at such an early stage of the funding round.

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The unique concept of OYO (On Your Own) brought a whole new revolution to the Hospitality industry. Oyo became an aggregator of many budget hotels and acquainted them with tech-enabled hospitality services. The company offers its services in more than 35 countries including India, Southeast Asia and Europe. The affordable and trusted accommodation with easy booking, digital check-ins, and cancellations make OYO the most trusted brand in the hospitality industry by customers.

A famous Indian multinational financial technology company Paytm is a digital revolution in the finance world. Under the umbrella of parent company One97 Communications, the headquarter of the company is located in Noida.

Name

PayTM

Industry

Fintech

Founding 2012 Year SoftBank, Sequoia, Innoven Furthermore, the OYO app is the 3rd most downloaded app with 100 Investors Capital, DSG, Lightspeed millions+ downloads. The popularity of the application is attributed to the flexible booking policies which accommodate the special needs of the young guests.

The digital method of Paytm (Pay Through Mobile) allows the customers to make safe and secure payments directly through banks. The company rewards the customers with cashback, free coupons and other exciting offers while making payments through Paytm.

Founding 2010 Year Alibaba, SoftBank, Berkshire Investors Hathaway, Intel Capital, Sapphire Ventures

SERVICES OFFERED

In 2014, the company introduced the Paytm wallet that allows customers to store their money in it, which can be used later. Paytm wallet gained immense popularity during the demonetization. After the demonetization in India, the popularity of Paytm increased manyfold, with the slogan ‘Paytm Karo’ now having more than 300 million users in India.

Name

Oyo Rooms

Industry

Travel Tech

Founders Ritesh Agarwal

The various concepts have been introduced for every type of customer. From women to unmarried people, OYO ensures a safe stay for everyone. The various concepts introduced by OYO are:  OYO Townhouse OYO Townhouses are built keeping in mind the needs and wants of millennials' comfort, efficacy and convenience. Every room is well equipped with smart technology ensuring comfort and convenience.  OYO Homes OYO Homes are beautiful uniquely designed homes in local neighbourhoods. These homes are as convenient and consistent as OYO managed hotels.  Capital O Capital O is the perfect option for leisure and business stays. OYO offers hotels at prime locations at affordable prices. Through Captial O, OYO wants to conquer corporate accommodation.  OYO Weddingz.in OYO acquired Weddingz to make weddings more fun with its full package. The packages include catering, photography, makeup, digital invite and many more. It covers all the wedding tasks and makes it easier for the customers and their relatives to enjoy the wedding.

MEET THE FOUNDER

At the age of 27, Ritesh Agarwal founded OYO Hotels and rooms, which provides accommodation services that are budget-friendly, safe and hygienic. He was travelling at the age of 17 across India when he discovered the inadequacy of affordable and good quality hotels. In 2013, he incepted OYO Rooms to make good quality accommodation accessible. He became the World’s Youngest Self-made Billionaire after Kylie Jenner. Ritesh Agarwal is the first resident Asian to receive the Thiel Fellowship.

OYO BUSINESS MODEL

OYO Hotels marked its presence across the globe with its chain of Hotels and Homes. With the help of technology, the company enables the easy booking of hotel procedures at a low cost. The company partnered with over 43,000 hotels and 1,50,000 vacation homes and earned revenue from the rise in occupancy.

The company is backed by top-notch investors such as SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, LightSpeed Ventures, Hero Enterprise, Didi Chuxing, Greenoaks Capital, and many others.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Founders Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Starting its services with online bill payments, now Paytm allows its users a variety of services such as funds transfers, ticket booking and Paytm FASTag. Also, the company launched its eCommerce platform in 2016. The investment by the companies like Alibaba and Softbank Paytm raised 8,235 crores. This investment helped Paytm in achieving the unicorn status in India.

Paytm First Games is another group company which has quickly become one of the preferred go to gaming and stay at home entertainment options for millions of people in India. Another subsidiary, Paytm Insurance offers insurance products to millions of Indian consumers across 4 categories namely, two wheeler, four wheeler, health and life. It is incepted with an aim to simplify insurance and create an easy to understand journey for its customers.

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Everyone looks up to Vijay Shekhar Sharma whenever we talk about Paytm. His current net worth is $1.1 Billion. He hails from a small city Aligarh and was good in Academics. The entrepreneurial bug bit him in his college days when he founded indiasite.net in 1997. He founded One97Communications in 2000 to offer ringtones, cricket scores, mobile news content, and exam results. This company later became the cradle of Paytm.

AWARDS

Paytm has received many awards and accolades so far. Some of the highly prestigious awards are:  Vijay Shekhar Sharma was named to the 2017 Time 100 List of Most Influential People in the World  Paytm won ET Brand Equity Most Trusted Brand of the Year in 2016.  Vijay Shekhar Sharma was featured in Economic Times "India's Hottest Business Leader under 40"  Paytm App was featured in Apple App Store’s Best of 2014 in the Mobile/DTH Recharge & Shopping Category

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name Industry

PayTM Mall E-commerce

Founders

Vijay Shekhar Sharma

PharmEasy

Industry

Healthtech

Founders

Mikhil Innani, Dharmil Sheth and Dhaval Shah

Founding Year 2014

Founding Year 2017 Investors

Name

Investors

Alibaba, SoftBank, eBay

Prosus, Temasek, Orios, Bessemer Venture Partners, Innoven Capital

Name

Pine Labs

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Rajul Garg, Tarun Upadhyay, Lokvir Kapoor

Founding Year

1998

Investors Paytm Mall is a B2C retail platform. It was launched by Paytm in 2016. The platform offers a variety of products in electronics, fashion, furnishing and others to the customers. The app offers discounts and rewards to the customers on ordered items.

The app of Paytm mall is available on android and iOS. It enables the users to shop anything from anywhere with just one app. The discounts, home delivery and return policies attract customers to it.

The company entered the list of the unicorn club in 2018. But the company faced a major hit in its valuation after big investors like Alibaba and Ant Financial exited the firm. The company had to lose its unicorn status.

Name

PhonePe

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Burzin Engineer, Rahul Chari, Sameer Nigam

Founding Year 2015 Investors

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Flipkart, Walmart, Tencent, Tiger Global

India’s one of the most trusted online healthcare aggregators, PharmEasy enables quality healthcare services and products at affordable prices. The company delivers genuine medicine and other products directly to customers’ doorstep. The tagline of the company ‘Take it easy PharmEasy’, ensures the highest savings and quality to the customers with the discounts and offers.

In 2020, PharmEasy merged with Medlife and acquired 100% equity in the company.

PharmEasy operates in 1000+ cities across India. Ensuring speedy delivery, the company delivers the product in 24-48 hours. The registered users of PharmEasy are over 25 million showing its credibility and quality that customers vouch for.

A digital payment company, PhonePe allows its users to make and transfer money instantly by using a mobile number. The company was founded in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. PhonePe ensures easy, safe and secure payments that are universally accepted anywhere. Flipkart acquired the UPI-based app PhonePe app a year later after its inception. Since then the company hasn't looked back.

PhonePe is among the first UPI-based apps available in over 11 languages. Apart from this, it also facilitates the users to check their account balances, buy gold, transfer money, pay utility bills and much more. RBI legally gives the authorisation to the company to share financial data freely with Financial Information Users and Financial Information Providers, however, it needs prior permission from the users before sharing any data. Flipkart and Walmart are consistently seen as the biggest investors of the company. It also helps PhonePe to reach the $1 billion mark and enter the unicorn list in India.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Mastercard, Temasek, Alpha Wave, Vitruvian Partners

Pine Labs is a fintech company that provides solutions for lastmile retail transactions. It was earlier a card-based payment company that now stands as an Indian merchant platform. In 2012, the company introduced its first Unified PoS platform which turned out to be the turning point for Pine Labs. The PoS machines are used by the merchants for earning revenue with low costs, complexity and risks.

The services of Pine Labs are used by different industry merchants like electronics, food & beverage, fashion, telecom, fashion, airlines and many more. The company is associated with 15 banks, 7 financial institutions, and 100+ brands. Pine Labs processes over 550 million digital payments every year.

Name

Policybazaar

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal, Avaneesh Nirjar, Tarun Mathur, Manoj Sharma

Founding Year 2008 Investors

SoftBank, True North, Tiger Global, Tencent, PremjiInvest

PolicyBazaar is an eminent general insurance aggregator that makes a comparative analysis of insurance products based on price, key benefits and quality. One of the main reasons behind the company’s inception was the personal experience Yashish Dahiya faced with the Mis-selling of the insurance.

The company offers comparisons in a variety of insurances like car insurance, life insurance, health insurance and travel insurance. PolicyBazaar partners with some prestigious companies like Aditya Birla Capital, SBI Life Insurance, PNB Metlife, Max Life, IDBI Federal Life and many to the list. In 2018, PolicyBazaar turned into a unicorn after receiving an investment of $200 million from SoftBank. It is the second fintech company in India to cross the $1 Billion mark.

Name

Polygon

Industry

Blockchain

Founders

Anurag Arjun, Jaynti Kanani, Mihailo Bjelic, Sandeep Nailwal

Founding Year Investors

2018 Sequoia Capital, Mark Cuban, Coinbase Ventures

Polygon is a company that provides a well-structured, easy to use platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure. Polygon offers a decentralized platform with low transaction costs. The company helps its customers to drive Apps faster, safer and at affordable costs. In 2017, the company was incepted with the name of Matic. But in 2021, the company rebranded to Polygon, and since then Polygon hasn't looked back.

Polygon has a customer base of over 130 million unique users with 3M+ daily transactions. The company has processed more than 3.4 billion transactions since its inception.

Polygon became a crypto unicorn in India with backing from the investors such as SoftBank, Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global and Republic Capital.

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INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Postman

Industry

Enterprisetech

Founders

Abhijit Kane, Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti

Founding Year

2014

Investors

Insight Partners, Nexus Venture Partners

An API platform, Postman is among the world’s leading companies that simplify the process of Application Programming Interface (API). The company helps to make an easier lifecycle and streamlines collaboration to create API faster. The customer base of the Postman platform is 5,00,000 companies including Twitter, Shopify, Intuit, Imgur and many more. It is used by 98% of the Fortune 500 companies.

Postman is a team of dedicated professionals, with two offices in Banglore and is headquartered in San Francisco. In the Series D funding round, the company raised $225 million.

This round was led by reputed investors like Insight Partners, Investors Coatue, Battery Ventures, CRV and Nexus Venture Partners.

Name

Pristyn Care

Industry

Healthtech

Founders

Harsimarbir Singh, Vaibhav Kapoor, & Garima Sawhney

Founding Year 2018 Investors

Tiger Global, Hummingbird, Sequoia, Winter Capital

Founded in 2018, Pristyn Care is a leading name in providing Secondary Care Surgeries. The platform delivers its expertise in offering care and assistance at each step of the surgery. Leveraging the advanced technology, the different treatment categories available are Proctology, Laparoscopy, Urology, Gynaecology, ENT and many more. Over 400 doctors are available for 50+ diseases in more than 40 cities. Pristyn Care has cured 200k+ patients performing 45,000 surgeries.

Right from the discovery of disease to the recovery, Pristyn Care ensures the smooth experience of the patient. After raising the funds of $100 million in Series E round funding, the company crossed the net valuation of $1 Billion.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

Quikr

Industry

Consumer Services

Founders

Pranay Chulet, Jiby Thomas

Founding Year 2008 Investors

Tiger Global, Innoven Capital, Trifecta Capital, Brand Capital, Omidyar Network

Based in Bangalore, Quikr is one of the largest Indian classified companies. The company connects the buyers and sellers independently.

In 2015, it launched the Quikr Cars with a range of automobiles including cars, motorbikes and other commercial vehicles. Incepted in 2008, the company grows in various classified vertices like Cars, Homes, Jobs and many more to the list.

Quikr has a user base of over 30 million a month. The company has marked its presence in 1200 cities in India. Quikr announced Ranveer Singh and Suriya as the company’s brand ambassadors. It raised total funds of $350 million in 7 different rounds and entered the prestigious club of Indian unicorns.

Name

Rebel Foods

Industry

Consumer Services

Founders

Jaydeep Barman, Kallol Banerjee

Founding Year 2011 Investors

Goldman Sachs, Sequoia, Alteria Capital, Qatar Investment Authority

The world’s largest chain of online restaurants, Rebel Foods was earlier known as Fassos.

Founded in 2011, the company established a multi-brand and a cloud kitchen model in India. It offers culinary craftsmanship with the best technological infrastructure and owns over 25 brands such as Behrouz Biryani, Mandarin Oak, Ovenstory Pizza, Sweet Truth and many more. Rebel Foods has also partnered with the most popular food brands like Mad Over Donuts, Wendy’s, Slay Coffee and Holy Cow Curry Sauces.

Rebel Foods serves more than 2 million customers with a network of 4000+ restaurants in 60 cities across 10 countries. After raising the funds in the Series F round, the company achieved the status of a unicorn.

Name

Rivigo

Industry

Logistics

Founders

Deepak Garg, Gazal Kalra

Founding Year

2014

Investors

Elevation, Trifecta Capital, Warburg Pincus

Name

ReNew Power

Industry

Cleantech

Founders Founding Year

Sumant Sinha

Investors

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Franklin Templeton, Yes Bank

2011

The leading renewable energy company in India, ReNew Power meets the rising demand for energy with smarter energy choices. With a capacity of 10GW, the company has grown exponentially. It provides 1% of the total electricity produced in India and also reduces the carbon emission by 0.5%. Directly and indirectly, the company employs people by providing over 1 lakh jobs.

The company is committed to providing sustainable, affordable and clean modes of energy. ReNew Power has partnered with Larsen & Turbo and Indian Oil aiding the Green Hydrogen Transition in India. In 2017, ReNew Power became a unicorn by crossing the $1 billion mark.

Through innovation, technology and operational excellence, Rivigo is making logistics human. The company offers fullstack logistics including relay-red trucking and freight marketplace. With its breakthrough model, the company is solving the most real and fundamental problem of truck drivers in the logistic industry.

The aim of the company is to improve the job prospects for truck drivers and help them economically and socially. Rivigo owns more than 5000 high tech trucks that reach 4000 cities, covering more than 29,000 pin codes in the country. After raising the funds of $4.8 million from KB Global Platform Funds, Rivigo turned into a unicorn in 2019.

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100

INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

RazorPay

Name

Shopclues

Industry

Fintech

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Harshil Mathur, Shashank Kumar

Founders

Radhika Ghai, Sanjay Sethi, Sandeep Aggarwal

Founding Year 2014 Investors

Founding Year 2011

Sequoia, Tiger Global, Y Combinator, Salesforce

Investors RazorPay is a company that provides fullstack financial solutions to its customers. The company offers a safe, secure and technologically advanced payment getaway for digital payments. It helps businesses to transact and manage money more efficiently. The company helps its customers with Payment Getaway, Payment Links, QR Codes, Instant Settlement, Invoices and RazorPay Capital.

More than 50,00,000 businesses are using RazorPay including Grofers, Goibibo, Airtel, Quikr, Zoho, Disney Hotstar and many more.

The company generates its revenue by charging the fees on subscription collection. It is India’s second most valued Fintech startup after Paytm.

In 2020, it entered the list of Indian unicorns.

Name

Slice

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Deepak Malhotra, Rajan Bajaj

Founding Year

2016

Investors

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Insight Partners, Tiger Global, Blume

Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, GIC, Innoven Capital

An Indian online marketplace, ShopClues is a company owned by Clues Networks Pvt Ltd. Started in 2011 with 5 people, now ShopClues is a team of more than 700 professionals. The platform merged with the Qoo10 and expanded into cross-border trade. It offers over 8.5 SKUs and merchandise worth rupees 50,000 crores.

ShopClues is associated with more than 6 lakh merchants. The monthly visits to the website are over 100 million.

ShopClues gives the platform to the small sellers and merchants and delivers the products in over 30,000 pin codes. The company aims to do fast delivery at affordable prices ensuring the best customer experience. The privately held firm, ShopClues became a unicorn in 2016.

A fintech startup, Slice provides a transparent financial platform to youngsters and redesigns their financial experience. The company provides 2% cashback on every card transaction. The app manages financial expenses with its passbook feature. It is trusted by more than 12 million customers and is associated with 7 million registered users with an average age of 27.

Slice also offers the option to convert monthly bills into instalments and pay them partly without any additional charges. In 2021, Slice entered the list of unicorns after raising the funds of $220 million in a Series B funding round. This funding round was led by top-notch investors like Tiger Global Management and Insight Partners.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Name

Snapdeal

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal

Founding Year

2010

Investors

Nexus Venture Partners, Foxconn, BlackRock, SoftBank, Alibaba Group

Snapdeal is an eCommerce platform that grows beyond just brands and urban users. The company offers a variety of products ranging from fashion, home, beauty & personal care, and other categories. Established in 2010, the company is headquartered in Gurugram. Around 80% of the customers on the platform are from non-metro locations.

Snapdeal is among India’s leading online shopping destinations with 200 million+ app installations. The company ensures the best deal of products along with quality, durability and trendiness. It became a unicorn in 2016 with a market valuation of $6.5 billion.

Name

Spinny

Industry

Ecommerce

Founders

Mohit Gupta, Niraj Singh, Ramanshu Mahaur

Founding Year 2015 Investors

Tiger Global, Avenir Growth Capital, Elevation, General Catalyst

Name

ShareChat

Industry

Media & Entertainment

Founders

Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Singh, and Farid Ahsan

Founding Year

2015

Investors

Tiger Global, Twitter, Temasek, Alkeon Capital Management, Times Internet

The most trusted platform for buying and selling cars, Spinny is a new age platform for used cars in India. The company enables the transparent and seamless process of buying highquality cars. To check the quality of cars, Spinny runs 200 points rigorous quality check. It also provides the facility of a no-obligation test drive and 5 days no questions asked money-back guarantee.

ShareChat is a social media platform that allows its users to operate in 14 different Indian languages. It has more than 32 million creators that generate 75+ million content per month.

Earlier, the content of ShareChat was available in 4 languages - Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, and Malayalam. After getting the popularity, the platform added more regional languages.

Customers can choose from the range of over 5000 quality assured cars. Spinny is trusted by 1 lakh+ customers across the country. The company raised the funding of $285 million in the Series E funding round and drove into the noble club of unicorns in 2021.

In July 2020, ShareChat launched ‘Moj’ that is a short video app. Moj has monthly users of 75 million average users. Many companies and businesses use the app to advertise their product or services. ShareChat raised the funds of $502 million in its latest funding round which helps the company to cross the $1 billion mark and enter the unicorn club.

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100

INDIAN UNICORNS

Founded in 2014, Swiggy is among the leading food delivery platforms in India. With the tagline of ‘Swiggy Karo, Phir Jo Chahe Karo!’, Swiggy delivers the food directly to customers’ doorsteps.

Starting from just one city, Swiggy has now spread its services to more than 500 cities across India. The company employs more than 5000 employees and over 2 lakhs independent delivery executives for smooth delivery.

Swiggy

Industry

Ecommerce

Industry

Consumer Services

Founders

Founders

Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety, and Rahul Jaimini

Sujeet Kumar, Amod Malviya, and Vaibhav Gupta

Founding Year

2016

The investors of Swiggy include Prosus Ventures, Alpha Wave Global, Sumeru Venture and SAIF Partners among others. $1.25 Billion of funds were raised from SoftBank, which is the biggest investment for the company and pivoted the space of Swiggy in the market. The investment of $700 million by Atlanta-based investment company - Invesco makes Swiggy the fifth startup in India to achieve the status of decacorn.

Swiggy is expanding its market with the launch of Swiggy Genie, Swiggy Instamart and Health Hub.

THE FOUNDERS TEAM

Sriharsha Majety is the current cofounder and CEO of the company. After completing his BE in Electrical and Electronics and M.Sc in Physics, Sriharsha went to study the CFA program from the CFA Institute. He then pursued MBA in Finance from IIM Calcutta. In 2013, he cofounded Bundl Technologies along with Lakshmi Nandan Reddy which later became the cradle for Swiggy.

Lakshmi Nandan Reddy is the cofounder of Swiggy. He studied M.Sc from BITS Pilani. He was the head of the operations of Social Media in Source Pilani. Before founding Swiggy, he was the founding partner at Zurna.

Rahul Jaimini is also the cofounder of the company but he left the organization in May 2020 and cofounded Pesto Tech.

KEY ACTIVITIES

Swiggy is one of the most preferred food delivery platform in India. Its key activities are:  Managing the payment and delivery processes  Hiring delivery partners and suppliers  Forming partnerships with eateries and shops

COMPETITORS

Swiggy has a number of competitors. Some of them are Zomato, Uber Eats, Postmates, GrubHub and many others. However, boasts of a huge market now.

Swiggy envisions becoming India’s most loved hyper local player. It is on a mission to become the most accessible platform on the network: hyperlocal, horizontal and across different categories.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Udaan

Name

Founding 2014 Year Started with the food delivery, now Swiggy delivers the groceries Investors Accel, Prosus, DST Global, Invesco, SoftBank and stationeries also. The business model of Swiggy is hyperlocal food delivery with the use of innovative technology to bridge the gap between customers and the restaurants.

THE FUTURE PLAN

Name

Investors

Tencent, GGV Capital, Moonstone Capital, Innoven Capital, BlackSoil

Udaan is the largest business-to-business e-commerce platform in India, transforming the way of trade. Udaan leverages the technology to empower businesses with the power and scale offered by eCommerce. The company deals in various categories including lifestyle, electronics, FMCG, Pharmaceuticals and many more.

Udaan is associated with 3 million users, 1.7 million retailers, chemists, Kirana store owners and other 30,000 sellers across India. The company also enables financial products and trade credit services through udaanCapital to businesses, manufacturers, and retailers to scale the business. In 2018, the company became a unicorn; it is among the fastest companies to achieve unicorn status.

Name

Unacademy

Industry

Edtech, E-learning

Name

Uniphore

Founders

Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman Saini, Sachin Gupta

Industry

Enterprisetech

Founders

Ravi Saraogi, Umesh Sachdev

Founding Year 2015 Investors

SoftBank, Sequoia, Elevation, Steadview, Tiger Global

The leading edtech company, Unacademy builds the knowledge repository for multi-lingual education. Starting from the youtube channel in 2010, Unacademy launched its feature-rich edtech platform in 2015. The company offers courses in competitive exams like CAT, JEE, NEET, UPSC and many more.

Unacademy is one of the largest online learning platforms with over 1 million learners and 40k live classes. It is also the biggest live learning platform with 200k+ daily active users who are learning through live classes. Unacademy acquired the companies such as Kreatryx, PrepLadder, Codechef and Graphy app to make learning more interactive and fun. In 2020, Unacademy became the second edtech company to enter the unicorns club of India.

Founding Year 2008 Indian Angel Network, Sorenson, Investors Chiratae Ventures, March Capital, NEA The global leader in Conversational Automation, Uniphore unlocks the value of every enterprise conversation. The company built a powerful conversational platform with AI, computer vision, emotional analysis, workflow automation and Robotic Process Automation. The company provides services to various industries including Banking, BPO, Healthcare, and Telecom.

Incepted in 2008, Uniphore grew substantially by helping millions of customers. Headquartered in California, the company employs 600 employees in India, the US, Spain, Japan, Israel and Singapore. Leveraging the technology, Uniphore with its Conversational Automation helps businesses in optimising customer service, improves decision making and drives sales efforts. With the fundraising of $400 million, Uniphore became a unicorn in 2022.

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100

INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Urban Company

Industry

Consumer Services

Name

VerSe Innovation

Founders

Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra

Industry

Media & Entertainment

Founders

Umang Bedi, Virendra Gupta

2014

Founding Year 2007

2015

Founding Year

IIFL, Temasek, IFC, Unilazer

Investors

Prosus, Dragoneer, Wellington Management, Tiger Global, and Steadview

Investors

Name

upGrad

Industry

Edtech, E-learning

Founders Founding Year Investors

Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, Ravijot Chugh, Ronnie Screwvala

upGrad is an EdTech company that provides higher education through its eLearning platforms. The company’s courses are designed programmes in collaboration with top universities like IIT Madras, Jindal Global Law School, MICA, Deakin University and many more. The eLearning platforms are gaining popularity for their flexible schedules and convenient access.

The robust tech platform of upGrad makes its space among the renowned edTech companies.

The comprehensive learning environment with peer-to-peer learning and one-on-one mentoring enhance learners’ experience. The services offered by the company are skill-based and industry-relevant that learners can access from the comfort of their homes. upGrad is India’s 3rd edTech company to enter the Unicorn club after BYJU’S and Unacademy.

Name

Vedantu

Industry

Edtech

Founders

Vamsi Krishna, Pulkit Jain, Saurabh Saxena, and Anand Prakash

Founding Year Investors

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2011 Tiger Global, Accel, Omidyar Network,Trifecta Capital, GGV Capital

Urban Company is an all-in-one platform that offers premium services ranging from beauty to home cleaning services. It is Asia’s largest online platform that provides home services. Starting in 2014, Urban Company is witnessing exponential growth and hasn't looked back since then. It is associated with more than 5 million customers and 40,000 trained service professionals. Urban Company has set up 25+ training centres in India with 100 trainers to train the partners to ensure quality service.

The automated matchmaking algorithm connects the customers with beauticians, cleaners and other professionals. To ensure the safety of customers, Urban Company performs the police verification and background checks of all the service providers.

Defying the conventional education platform, Vedantu provides the platform for Live Online Tutoring. Students get education from the best teachers in India and attend live interactive classes. Vedantu provides personalized tutoring in the K-12 segment. To make the learning more interactive, students can also take part in quizzes and activities.

The platform has marked its presence in 57 countries with more than 10 lakh students. The app is used by more than 35 million active learners. The views on Vedantu’s youtube channel are more than 65 million. After raising the funds of $100 million in the Series E funding round, Vedantu became the 5th Indian edtech company to join the list of unicorns.

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

Sequoia Capital, Goldman Sachs, Omidyar Network India, CPP Investments, Matrix Partners

VerSe Innovation is a parent company of DailyHunt and Josh. Its proprietary technology platform power more than 300 million users to consume the content in local languages. Josh is India’s fastest-growing platform for short video apps. The company has a user base of over 300 million users. VerSe Innovation with its design tools helps creators to create innovative and unique content and display it to the world.

VerSe Innovation saw magnificent growth during the pandemic time. The company was valued at $3 million after a $450 million funding in August 2021 and before investment by top giants like Google and Microsoft. VerSe is the first tech unicorn in local languages.

Name

Zenoti

Industry

Enterprisetech

Founders

Dheeraj Koneru, Saritha Katikaneni, Sudheer Koneru

Founding Year Investors

2010 Accel, Norwest, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global, TPG

Name

Xpressbees

Industry

Logistics

Founders

Amitava Saha, Supam Maheshwari

Founding Year 2015 Investors

Blackstone Group, TPG, Alibaba Group, InnoVen Capital, Norwest

India’s fastest growing logistics service provider, Xpressbees caters to end-to-end supply chain solutions. The company receives and delivers goods in every part of the country. It provides an array of services such as eCommerce Logistics, Express Cargo, Reverse Logistics, and Cross-Border Logistics.

The company is associated with reputed brands like FirstCry, Bajaj Finserv, Bira, Bewakoof, Purple, Meesho and many more. Xpressbees handles over 3 million shipments per day with more than 35,000 delivering partners and serves various industries including eCommerce, Banking& Finance, Consumer Goods, and more to the list. After raising the funds of $300 million from top-notch investors like Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth, and Chrys Capital, Xpressbees turned into a unicorn in 2021.

Headquartered in Washington, Zenoti is a platform that provides a cloud-based software solution for the spa, salon and med spa industry. It helps the clients in managing their business by reducing costs and ameliorating customer retention and engagement.

The company provides comprehensive mobile solutions for online appointment bookings, POS, CRM, inventory management and employee management. Zenoti has a team of dedicated professionals of over 650 employees in 8 offices around the globe. Zenoti is associated with more than 1,000 brands and 15,000 businesses. The $160 million funding round propelled the company to become a unicorn.

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100

INDIAN UNICORNS

Name

Zerodha

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath

Founding Year

2010

Investors

Bootstrapped

An Indian financial services company, Zerodha is responsible for pioneering the discount broking model. It offers the services in brokerage-free equity investments, institutional broking and commodities trading. It helps customers to gain insights into trading and investments with in-depth reports and visualisation. The app is available both on Android and iOS. It is an ultra trading platform streaming with elegant UI, advanced charts and market data. Zerodha has partnered with Smallcase, GoldenPi, Ditto, and Sensibull.

Zerodha became a unicorn in 2020, crossing the valuation of $1 Billion. It is among very few profitable startups that bootstrapped to billions. Without the funding of any external investor, Zerodha entered the elite unicorn club.

Name

Zoho

Industry

SaaS, Software

Founders

Sridhar Vembu, Tony G. Thomas, Sreenivas Kanmuru

Founding Year Investors

Name

Zomato

Name

Zetwerk

Industry

Consumer Services

Industry

Manufacturing

Founders

Deepinder Goyal, Pankaj Chaddah & Gaurav Gupta

Founders

Amrit Acharya, Rahul Sharma, Srinath Ramakkrushnan, Vishal Chaudhary

Founding Year 2008 Investors

Sequoia, Vy Capital, Temasek, Naspers, Tiger Global

Since its inception in 2008, Zomato has experienced tremendous growth. The online food delivery platform allows its customers to explore different restaurants and get the food delivered right at their doorstep. Initially, the company started with the name Foodiebay and rebranded in 2010 and changed its name to Zomato.

Zomato provides the reviews, menus and ratings of the restaurants to make it easier for the customers to choose the best option. With the investors like Ant group, Baillie Gifford, Steadview and D1 Capital, Zomato entered the Unicorn club of India in 2018. The company also engages itself in the initiative ‘Feeding India’, which provides food to poor and daily wage workers. Zomato is working towards eliminating the use of plastic packaging to provide delicious, healthy, and hygienic food.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

1996 Bootstrapped

Founding Year 2017 Investors

Sequoia, Lightspeed, Innoven Capital, Kae Capital, Greenoaks

Zetwerk is a company that transforms the traditional manufacturing world through new-age technology. The company offers expertise in manufacturing and helps its customers to reduce costs and maximise efficiency. It provides a variety of services from custom made components to mass production with quality certification and managed supply chains. The company is ISO certified and provides 100% quality for every project.

With multiple rounds of funding, Zetwerk achieved the status of a unicorn in India. The investors of Zetwerk include renowned names like Kae Capital, Sequoia, Accel, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, Greenoaks Capital, and D1 Capital Partners.

Name

Zeta

Industry

Fintech

Founders

Bhavin Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati

Founding Year Investors

2015 SoftBank, Sodexo, Mastercard

The Chennai-based startup, Zoho helps businesses to grow through its uniquely designed software. The company offers aid in sales & marketing, support & collaboration, finance and recruitment needs. What makes Zoho unique from the rest of the software is that the company respects users’ privacy and does not include ad revenue models in any part of its business.

The Co-Founder of Zoho, Sridhar Vembu is an awardee of the most prestigious and fourth highest civilian award in India, Padma Shri. The customer base of Zoho expands significantly since its inception and today the company has over 60 million users. The self-funded company, Zoho became a unicorn in 2021.

A Bengaluru-based startup, Zeta is a fintech platform that provides the neo-banking platform. The company reforms the payments from the core to the edge. It has built an Omni stack platform that helps financial institutions with credit, prepaid, DDA, Processing and many more. The services of the company are used by different banks like RBL Banks, Kotak Mahindra Bank, RBL Bank, and IDFC Bank. Apart from these, 14,000 corporates and 2 million+ users are also associated with the company.

The company ensures the safety and security of the payment with the use of full-stack and cloud-native technology. The company processes more than 1 million transactions per day.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California and employs more than 900 personnel. The investment of $250 million in Series C funding helped Zeta to cross the $1 billion mark. With top-notch investors like SoftBank, Sodexo and MasterCard, the company raised to the status of a unicorn.

The presence of Zetwerk is in more than 15 countries. The company is associated with over 1800 customers and 8000 suppliers.

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FACTS •

The Indian government defines a startup as an entity less than seven years young with an annual turnover of less than 250 million rupees and headquartered in India.

•

India has the 3rd largest startup ecosystem in the world.

•

As per the report by Economic Survey 2021-22, India has over 61,400 startups recognized by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), with at least recognized during fiscal 2022.

•

The United States is the Biggest Source Of Foreign Investments in Indian Startups.

•

Delhi, the national capital of India, has dethroned Bengaluru to become the startup capital of India, according to Economic Survey 2022.

•

As of May 2022, India has four decacorn (a company with a valuation of more than $10 Bn) startups - Flipkart, BYJU’s, Nykaa, and Swiggy.

•

In the first 40 days of the year 2022, 8 new Indian startups added their names to the unicorn (a company with a valuation of more than $1 Bn) list.

•

Homegrown startups raised over $12 billion during the first three months of the current year (2022) as compared to $4 billion during the same period in the previous year (2021).

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In the first four months of 2022, India registered 14 new unicorns completing the mark of the 100th unicorn. With the big brands such as Xpressbees, Uniphore, Cred Avenue, Deal Share and many more, India registered an all-time high unicorn wave. NeoBank Open became the 100th startup that entered the unicorn club with a valuation of $1 billion.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

I

ndia is raining unicorns, a significant increase is seen in the last few years where companies have crossed the net worth of $1 billion. Till the year 2016-17, the rate at which companies turn into unicorns was quite slower but in the past few years, this rate has increased manifold. The year 2021 was considered the best year for the Indian Startups, with 42 unicorns contributing to the largest spike in the unicorn list. Businesses are adding to the Unicorn club with a massive year-on-year growth of 66% growth rate.

India has the third-highest number of unicorns in the world.

The data by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry shows that the net valuation of all the 100 unicorns is $332.7 billion. The report also suggested that 1 out of 10 unicorns in the world originated in India.

It is very common to think that if a company achieves the status of a unicorn, it is earning huge profits. But it is said that all that glitter is not gold. The same applies to unicorns; not all 100 unicorn startups in India have attained profitability.

According to the report by Entrakr, only 18 unicorns are profitable and 57 unicorns suffered deep losses in the financial year 2021. 25 startups have not disclosed their profits and losses but there is a high chance that half of them are suffering the losses. The top companies from the unicorn club that are profitable include Zoho, Zerodha, Dream11 and InfoEdge.

WHAT LED TO THE SUDDEN BOOM?

The clear answer is pandemic which triggered the growth of the Unicorns. While the entire nation was working from home, the need for the IT industry enjoyed a sudden boom.

The pandemic fueled the growth of digital businesses in the Tech, SaaS and eCommerce sectors. These industries largely contribute to the unicorn world.

The data from the Ministry of Commerce & Industry show that there are over 69,000 recognized startups in the country till 2 May 2022. The startups are categorised in 56 different sectors, out of which 13% are from the IT industry only.

THE BACKLASH WITH INVESTORS

The unicorns raised a huge amount of over $80 billion from various investors. But according to the market reports, the companies faced backlash from investors for not managing and achieving the desired profitability level.

Some of the companies that are listed on the Stock Exchange in the financial year 2021 have now fallen below their earlier IPO status. Companies like Paytm, PolicyBazaar and Zomato are among those companies whose prices of initial public offering experienced a downfall.

The high burning cash models are also criticised by the investors. In February 2022, Macquarie Group stated that Paytm is not going to achieve profitability soon. It will remain the “distant reality” for the company.

THE UNFORTUNATE SIDE

The total number of unicorns has increased to 100 in the year 2022. However, this number does not accurately depict the profitability of all the companies. Famous and big companies like Vedantu, Unacademy, Meesho and Blinkit laid off their employees in huge numbers.

The edtech unicorn, Vedantu fired 200 employees at beginning of May 2022 and predict the further possibility of mass layoffs.

The layoffs are considered a smaller step in order to increase profitability and cost-cutting. This action points toward the upcoming problems.

THE FINAL WORDS

The top companies that are facing huge losses are OYO, Flipkart, ShareChat, Udaan, Swiggy, and Unacademy among others. The irony here is that the most valued startups like Flipkart, OYO, and Unacademy are dealing with losses of over 1000 crores.

All these scenarios compel us to think that raising funds from the investors is not sufficient but utilizing them in such a way that provides profit to the company is necessary. Today, we might be celebrating 100 unicorns but the real question is to see how many unicorns are actually earning the profits.

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| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022

BudBiz | The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022 |

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60 | BudBiz

| The Dawn of Startups! | Vol. 1 | Issue 1 | June 2022