India has added seven unicorns in the first eight months of 2019, taking the total number of unicorns to 24, revealed IT industry body Nasscom's annual report. At 24, India stands at the third spot in the global unicorn list, after the USA and China, that have 203 and 206 unicorns, respectively. Unicorns are startups with a valuation of over $1 billion.
2019 witnessed the addition of two unicorns from Pune, the second year in a row where a startup outside Bangalore, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai has achieved a unicorn status, the report said.
Two unicorns were added from Delhi-Gurugram, two were added from Bengaluru, while one was added from Mumbai.
Bigbasket, Delhivery, Rivigo, Dream 11, Druva, Ola Electric and Icertis are the startups that entered the unicorn list this year.
Five of these new unicorns are B2B, highest ever in a year till date.
Bengaluru-based Bigbasket is an online grocery store with total funding of $885 million. Ola Electric too is headquartered in Bengaluru. With total funding of $306 million, Ola Electric is a developer of electric mobility services and charging infrastructure.
Delhivery, a Delhi-based firm, offers logistics services for Indian ecommerce companies. It has a total funding of $306 million. Rivigo, a Gurugram-based firm with total funding of $238 million, is a tech-enabled logistics with a truck fleet of its own.
Dream 11, with total funding of $100 million, is a Mumbai-based online platform for playing real-time fantasy cricket and football.
Icertis and Druva are Pune based. While Icertis, with total funding of $330 million, is a cloud-based contract management platform, Druva, with a funding of $211 million, offers a backup and data loss prevention solution for enterprises.
"Indian unicorn club now has companies in gaming, supply chain and logistics,
enterprise, e-mobility in addition to e-commerce and mobility," the report read.
According to the report, the average time taken by a startup to turn into a unicorn in India and USA was 6 to 8 years, while in China, a startup, on an average, took 4 to 6 years to become a unicorn.
In terms of valuations, the average value of a unicorn in India was about $3.2 billion, while it was about $3.5 billion and $3.8 billion for USA and China, the report said.
"The parallelism observed with the rise of one start-up triggering the growth of other, solving complementary problems is expected to strengthen the pipeline of unicorns in future as seen in the case of Flipkart and PayTM in the past. This is a unique feature of the Indian start-up ecosystem compared to the sequential growth of sectors in the US and China," the report said.
Nasscom expects that the Indian Unicorn club could grow to 95-105 in 2025.
