In a year when the revenue crunch caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown was widely discussed in business circles, some Indian start-ups were able to weather the storm, post impressive revenue figures, and raise funding to reach a valuation of more than $1 billion and join the unicorn club.
With the start of 2021, India has been the rise of many startup unicorns Some companies have already made the list in the first four months of 2021, with more expected to join shortly, as India is expected to raise $13.7 billion this year.
Read About: Top Unicorn Start-ups in India-2021
Digit Insurance
Digit Insurance, a Bengaluru-based insurtech company, was the first to join the Indian unicorn club in 2021. In January, the firm secured $18 million (INR 135 crore) from previous investors, Faering Capital, and TVS Capital, valuing the firm at $1.9 billion.
Kamesh Goyal and Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Holdings created Digit Insurance, a tech-driven general insurance firm, in 2016. Customized insurance is available for health, vehicle, travel, cellphones, and commercial assets like stores and vacation homes. Between March 2020 and December 2020, it claims to have grown by 31.9 percent.
Zeta
Zeta, based in Bengaluru, provides a cloud-native neo-banking platform for issuing credit, debit, and prepaid goods and digitized solutions for businesses such as automated cafeteria billing and more.
Serial entrepreneurs Bhavin Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati launched the firm in 2015. On May 24, 2021, it became a unicorn after raising $250 million in a Series C funding round led by Japanese corporation SoftBank. Notably, the company’s valuation has risen by 4.8X from its previous round in July 2019, when it was valued at $300 million.
Meesho
Meesho is an online reseller network for people and small and medium enterprises (SMBs) who sell items inside their network through social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. It was founded in 2015 by IIT-Delhi grads Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal. About 13 million individual entrepreneurs use the platform, bringing eCommerce advantages to 45 million clients across India.
Although the Indian social commerce sector is still in its infancy, it is expected to develop at a CAGR of 55 percent to 60 percent by 2025, reaching a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $16 billion to $20 billion. Meesho’s entry into the unicorn club is one of the most significant milestones in the category, and it will significantly influence the category’s growth momentum.
Infra.Market
Aaditya Sharda and Souvik Sengupta founded the firm in 2016 with a registered headquarter in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, and it is a B2B online procurement platform for real estate and construction materials that uses technology to provide consumers with fair pricing and a smoother procurement experience.
Infra.Market saw a 5.5X increase in revenue in the fiscal year 2020, from INR 63 Cr in FY19 to INR 250 Cr in FY20. In FY19, it made a profit of INR 1.74 crore, and in FY20, it made a profit of INR 8.59 crore. Infra.Market had earlier stated that by the end of the first quarter of 2021, it will have generated INR 150 crore in monthly revenue.
PharmEasy
PharmEasy is a chronic care Start-up established in 2015 by Dharmil Sheth and Dr. Dhaval Shah. It provides services such as teleconsultation, medicine deliveries, and sample selection for diagnostic testing. It links over 60K brick-and-mortar pharmacies and 4K doctors through India’s 16K postal codes.
The company was able to fulfill one of its targets — joining the unicorn group — after the merger was completed in the latter part of last year. In a Series E funding round, the firm raised $323 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
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CRED
Cred is one of the few Indian fintech start-ups to achieve unicorn status at such an early age, having launched just two and a half years ago, in 2018. CRED, headed by Kunal Shah, joined the unicorn group at a whopping valuation of $2.2 billion despite having just INR 57 lakh in operating revenue in the financial year 2020.
Last year, the firm decided to try its hand at e-commerce to boost sales and leverage its customer base. CRED Store was the first foray into e-commerce, and CRED Pay was launched in December to enable consumers to use their CRED incentive coins through e-commerce platforms to unlock discounts.
Groww
Groww is a Bengaluru-based online investing platform based in India. Groww helps investors to open an account and trade mutual funds and stocks over the internet. Ex-Flipkart employees Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal created the company in 2016, and it now has over 15 million registered users. The company raised $83 million in a Series D round led by Tiger Global, making it the Indian unicorn. Last September, the company raised $30 million in a Series C round.
ShareChat
ShareChat is an Indian social media and social networking service, based out of Bengaluru, India. It was developed by Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd. and founded by IIT-Kanpur alumni Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh, and Ankush Sachdeva in 2015.
ShareChat has raised $828 million in eight investment rounds, the most recent of which brought in $502 million in its Series E round. The funding puts an end to rumors that Google would invest in Sharechat.
Urban Company
Urban Firm, a hyperlocal service provider located in Gurugram, is the newest unicorn to enter the club, with its recent $188 million Series F fundraising round valuing the company at $2 billion. Proses led the investment, with DF International and Wellington Management joining in. While the $1 Bn+ valuation after Series F has not been verified, Urban Company has raised its $75 Mn Series A round.
Urban Company (previously known as Urban Clap) is a home service company that specializes in beauty and massage, appliance repair, plumbing, carpentry, cleaning, and painting. It was founded in 2014 by Abhiraj Bahl, Raghav Chandra, and Varun Khaitan. It operates in over ten Indian cities as well as four overseas markets: Australia, Singapore, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi.
Chargebee
Chargebee, a subscription management platform located in Chennai, was named the unicorn of 2021 after earning $125 million in its Series G fundraising round, valuing the company at $1.4 billion. Tiger Global, along with Sapphire Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, led the investment once again. Steadview Capital was also a part of the round, which saw the company’s valuation more than double in less than six months.
The company claims to cater to 2500 businesses across 53 countries. Chargebee’s customer portfolio includes the likes of access management company Okta, Freshworks, Calendly, Study.com, among others.
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