The first eight months of the year saw the birth of seven unicorns in India’s startup ecosystem, software industry body Nasscom said in a report, even as 52 others which have received over $50 million investments wait to join the list.
The number of India’s potential unicorns—a term to describe startups valued at $1 billion—more than tripled from 15 last year to 52 in 2019, becoming the world’s largest pipeline of unicorns in the making, Nasscom said in its report ‘Indian Tech Start-up Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s’.
India’s newest unicorns include Delhivery, a logistics startup; Icertis, which provides cloud-based enterprise contract management; Dream11, a gaming startup; Druva, which provides cloud data protection and management; Ola Electric, the electric vehicle arm of cab hailing firm Ola; and Rivigo, a logistics firm. With the latest additions, India now hosts 24 unicorns, the third-highest number of unicorns in a single country in the world.
Around 71% of 2019’s unicorns are business-to-business (B2B) focused, while 57% are from emerging and nascent sectors such as gaming, automotive and supply chain/logistics, according to the report.
Software and robotics platform GreyOrange, card processing company Pine Labs, online car marketplace CarDekho, online grocer Grofers, fintech start-up LendingKart, online truck aggregator Blackbuck are some of the potential unicorns at present.
“…Financially and strategically speaking, what’s been more important for us is to grow fast, but at a profitable scale. If growth comes at the cost of profitability, that is not something we support, and hence, we have been cautious about (rapid) growth. You can’t compromise on margins for growth, because that’s not sustainable,” said Hari Menon, chief executive of Bigbasket, which became a unicorn in 2019.
Menon added that grocery is a complex business due to large stock keeping unit (SKU) count, and, on a single average high-value order, Bigbasket may end up delivering anywhere between 20-25 SKUs.
