scorecardresearchIndia to produce 120 new unicorns in next three years, says report

India to produce 120 new unicorns in next three years, says report

Updated: 20 Apr 2022, 05:06 PM IST
TL;DR.

A total of 100 new tech unicorns have been created since Jan 2019 in India, and there will have 250 unicorns by 2025

US is the preferred destination for Indian unicorns with 31 percent (a total of 40) setting up their headquarters

US is the preferred destination for Indian unicorns with 31 percent (a total of 40) setting up their headquarters

When first product tech company InMobi became a unicorn in 2011, one could not have imagined that it wasn't an aberration, but emblematic of a new trend that was going to stay for many more years to come.

And the data speaks volumes about it. Sample this: So far, 100 new tech unicorns have been created since Jan 2019 in India, and there is an empirical projection of this number touching 250 by the year 2025.

These figures were shared by Iron Pillar India Tech Trends Mar 2022 report. The report sheds light on the surge of unicorns in India in the backdrop of this phenomenon in the rest of the world.

Another interesting trend that has come to light is that US is the preferred destination for Indian unicorns with 31 percent (a total of 40) setting up their headquarters there. This is followed by Bangalore that houses headquarters for 28 percent (a total of 36) of unicorns. Delhi-NCR has headquarters of 21 percent of unicorns (a total of 28) followed by Mumbai with 12 percent of head officers (for 16 unicorns).

Third largest tech market

As per the report, India has the third largest tech market in the world. While US and China have produced 51 percent and 17 percent unicorns in the world, respectively; India has produced 6 percent of the total number of unicorns, followed by 4 percent by UK and 2 percent each by Germany, France, Israel, Canada and Brazil.

The number of unicorns has been increasing at a fast pace. In 2017, there were a total of 17 unicorns with a total of $141 billion value. This rose by 30 more unicorns to increase the value to $215 billion in 2018.

Next year i.e., 2019, the number of unicorns increased by 43 taking the value to a total of $257 billion.

In 2020 and 2021, the number of Indian unicorns increased to 62 and 115 unicorns, respectively.

Till date (March 31) 2022, number of unicorns increased to 130 with a total valuation of $535 billion.

Year    No. of unicorns (cumulative)Value ($ Billion)
201717141
201830215
201943257
2020    62384
2021115497
2022*130535

*Till Mar 31, 2022

 

What is surprising is that the companies are now getting to unicorn status faster. A total of 65 out of 130 companies achieved unicorn status within five years from first capital raise.

 

Article
Nearly half of the companies took less than five years to reach unicorn status.  

 

Exit rate

As far as the exit rate is concerned, global cloud unicorns have the highest exit rate. There are 58 global cloud companies built from India, out of which 11 saw an exit — at a rate of 19 percent. The next best exit rate was seen in B2C companies wherein the exit rate was 11.8 percent for a total of 59 companies.

The least best was seen in B2B companies where exit rate was 7.7 percent for a total of 13 companies.

First Published: 20 Apr 2022, 05:06 PM IST