Only four months into 2021, the Indian startup ecosystem has already added ten new companies to the coveted $1 billion valuation club.
The country is already cheering in its new unicorns — Digit Insurance (insurtech), InnovAccer (healthtech), Five Star Business Finance (NBFC), Meesho (social commerce), Infra.Market (B2B ecommerce), CRED (fintech), Pharmeasy (healthtech), Groww (fintech), and the latest two — Gupshup (conversational messaging) and Mohalla Tech (parent company of social platforms ShareChat and Moj).
Of these, Meesho, CRED, PharmEasy, Groww, Gupshup, and Mohalla Tech atained the unicorn status this week. Heading into 2021, research firms and industry experts had predicted that India will see a significant increase in the number of unicorns. Currently, India has close to 40 unicorns, a NASSCOM report states that there will be 50 unicorns before 2021 ends, but the pace at which we are currently going, we may surpass that number soon.
In 2020, even with a pandemic wreaking havoc on the economy, 11 startups from India attained unicorn status while PhonePe reached a $5.5 billion valuation as an independent entity after its spin-off from Flipkart. Already, India’s unicorn club boasts startups like fintech majors Paytm and Zerodha, mobility player Ola, foodtech startups such as Zomato, and Glance, Cars24, Postman, among others.