Article: Who are the founders of Indian unicorns?

Startups

Who are the founders of Indian unicorns?

Engineers and repeat founders.
Who are the founders of Indian unicorns?

80% of Indian unicorns are founded by engineers while 75% of unicorns are founded by first time founders, reveals new report by Orios Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital Fund.

Further, over 25% of unicorns are founded by repeat founders, says the Indian Unicorns and Exits Report 2022.

These founders bring with themselves the expertise and the experience to run a business. Such successful unicorn founders can also be called serial entrepreneurs. This expertise is what helped India become the third nation to have 100 unicorns, including the 24 unicorns that emerged in 2022. Today, one unicorn out of every thirteen is born in India. 

Startups raised $25 billion in 2022, or almost 2.2 times as much as they did in 2020. However, in 2022, startups also witnessed a 30% decline in funding compared to 2021.

The number of startups IPOs also declined to four in 2022 compared to 11 in 2021. The year also saw 229 acquisitions and four IPOs.

Despite the “funding winter”, the technology ecosystem in India saw abundant activity in 2022. Saas dethroned fintech to become the sector with the largest number of unicorns.  This report also highlights the number of years it took on average for a company to turn unicorn. In 2022, it took an average of 8.4 years to turn unicorn, with 42 companies turning unicorns in less than 5 years. Bengaluru remained the largest unicorn hub in India and also emerged as the seventh largest unicorn hub of the world.

As per the report software-as-a-service (SaaS) had the largest number of unicorns in 2022 (6) ,followed by fintech (4) and logistics (3) and edtech (2).

There were 229 acquisitions in 2022 compared to 250 in 2021. MX Taka Tak acquired by Moj was the largest deal followed by Blinkit acquired by Zomato.

Swiggy was added to the Decacorn list in 2022, making the count 5 so far.

5ire became the fastest company to turn unicorn in 2022, reaching unicorn status in a mere 11 months. Mobio became the slowest unicorn last year taking 22 years to achieve unicorn status.

“India remains a global hotspot in technology company value creation with 22 unicorns last year. This speaks for the deep adoption of tech across the country. The next phase of the Indian technology story will be graduating these unicorns to exits via IPOs and the coming years should see a flurry of activity in that direction,” said Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners.

 

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Topics: Startups, Entrepreneurship

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