Unicorns & Soonicorns in India

Trends of Unicorns and Soonicorns in India and their areas of

start-ups

What does unicorn mean in business?

In the business world, a unicorn is a private company or a start-up with a
valuation of $1 billion or more.

It's a rare and extremely difficult moniker to achieve, and as of August 2020,
there has only been just over 400 unicorn companies ever (here's the list).

The term was first coined by Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy ventures when she
referred to the 39 startups that had a valuation of over $1 billion as unicorns.

Key Points:

 Aspirational India – Atmanirbhar Bharat

 Digital Evolution and Revolution – Aadhar, UPI, ONDC
 Indian centric world
 Knowledge vs Education
 Principle of BIG (Borrow – Invest – Grow)
 Startup Ecosystem – Young India
 2023 – India No.1 in population (1.41 billion)
 Focus of Business – Value creation vs Va ion / Profit vs Profile
 Case Studies:

1. Cropin – First Indian company developing Agri-intelligence Cloud Technology

 One room office in Bangalore – 2010 established by an Engineer Krishna

Kumar – Vishweshwaraiah Technology University Bangalore
 Presently 16 Million acers of farm land digitized for 7 million farmers in 56
countries
 500+ crops, 10,000 crop varieties mapped and assisted with Agri
intelligence forecast.
 200 million acres of farmland is under predictive intelligence.

2. Zet werk - Universal Manufacturing Networked factory – Digital - Bengaluru

 Offers full spectrum of manufacturing services from custom made

components to mass production.
 They are taking orders of supply for Steel, Cement etc for largescale
infrastructure projects across the world.

3. Rebel Foods – World’s largest chain of online restaurants – Mumbai

 Fasoos – Realised that 70% of their customers have never seen their
stores that is when they rebranded as
 Multibrand cloud kitchen model in India
 They operate 25+ own brands
 Network of 4000+ restaurants across 450+cloud kitchens across 60 cities
in 10 countries serving 2 million customers.
4. NoBroker.com – World’s Largest No brokerage property site – Bengaluru

 Disruptive brokerage free property search portal.

 Connects house or property owners and tenants or buyers eliminating
middlemen
 Claim to service more than 3 million customers monthly.

5. Meesho – Democratizing Internet Commerce – Bengaluru

 First social e-commerce company

 Enabled more than 15 million entrepreneurs to start their own online
business.
 45 million customers in India, 1 lakh registered suppliers, supplying over
27,000 pincodes serving more than 5000 cities.

Soonicorns are Indian startups with valuations of $200 Mn and above.

https://inc42.com/the-indian-soonicorn-tracker/

India has 73 potential unicorns in 2021, up from 52 soonicorns in 2020, with

Bengaluru leading the list followed by Mumbai and Delhi-NCR

As per analysis based on funding data as well as the valuations of startups as of

December 31, 2021, the Indian market currently has 73 startups in the soonicorn
club, and most of them are poised to become unicorns before the end of 2022.
In 2020, India had 52 soonicorns as per our analysis, out of which the likes of Cred,
Acko, Digit, Urban Company, MobiKwik, Pharmeasy, OfBusiness and others made
it to the unicorn club in 2021.

There are no surprises in terms of startup hubs where soonicorns are emerging.
Bengaluru currently has 31 potential unicorns, Mumbai is home to 19, and Delhi-
NCR is expected to witness a rise of 13 unicorns in 2022. Pune and Chennai also
make the list with three soonicorns each.