India reaches 100th Unicorn Mark!

India reaches 100th Unicorn Mark becoming Third-Largest In World! Open Financial Technologies Pvt Ltd, a neo-banking platform said it had become the 100th Indian unicorn. It raised $50 million in a Series D funding round led by IIFL Finance at over $1 billion valuations.

The term ‘Unicorns’ is stated by start-ups that attain a valuation of over $1 billion. The term was first popularised in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee.

Today, India ranks third in terms of start-ups with a $1 Bn+ valuation, only after the US and China. The leading countries – the US added 254 unicorns taking the tally to 487. Whereas China saw 74 unicorns in 2021, taking their tally to 301 start-ups that have achieved over $1 bn valuations.

Achieving this feat, Union Minister Piyush Goyal tweeted: ‘India hits a century in style!’

In today’s world, unicorn start-ups are not as uncommon as before; but, building a unicorn start-up isn’t easy. It requires lots of hard work, commitment and perseverance, Planning and actions throughout the start-up’s journey to becoming successful. Only some of them are having profits and a few are not technically unicorns anymore. Only 23 of 100 are profitable according to the data analytics firm Tracxn Technologies.

India’s Unicorn Journey

India got its first unicorn in 2011, and within a decade, India has 100 Unicorns with a cumulative valuation of $333 Bn – with Flipkart and BYJU’S being the 2 highest valued privately-held start-ups.

In 2011, InMobi, a multinational mobile advertising technology company, based in Bengaluru, became India’s first Unicorn Start-up. Flipkart in 2012, and MuSigma in 2013 followed to become 2nd and 3rd unicorns of India. Few other names like Paytm, Ola, Zomato, Byjus, BigBasket Nykaa, Unacademy etc. subsequent years, joined the Unicorn Club of India.

2021 saw the biggest number of companies joining the club, over 40 companies became unicorns within the same year. a number of them were Firstcry, Meesho, Cred, Groww, Upgrad, CoinDCX, Coinswitch, NoBroker, Upstox, and Mamaearth. In 2022, 16 companies achieved this feat with Open becoming the 100th Unicorn start-up!

During the past decade, some companies made IPO and got listed on the stock market. But some also switched headquarters abroad because of tax reasons and better opportunities. Polygon– Ethereum-based blockchain scaling service provider relocated to Dubai two years ago.