These startups are leveraging the new technologies and developing innovative solutions.The intellectual power, innovative thinking, creative application and technology combined with the fertile economic ground to experiment in a market that is full of challenges and opportunities has led to a significant growth of these startups leading many turning and becoming Unicorns. Until 2016-17, every year India added one Unicorn every year. However India has seen an exponential growth for Unicorns with a whopping 66% year on Year growth. In 2021, India there were more than 44 Unicorns born in India with a total valuation of $92.77 Bn. Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore were among the top cities besides Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad where young minds of India found a fertile ground to launch their ideas and set up their headquarters. As per the Inc42’s Annual Indian Startup Funding report 2021, India is home to 84 unicorns with a total valuation of $ 283 bn. India today contributes10% of total unicorns born globally. Despite the pandemic posing serious threats to businesses, it has been unsuccessful to deter the resolve of young Indian minds. 2021 saw an exponential boom amongst startups and unicorns in India. The credit goes to the vibrant startup ecosystem getting developed in the country
Until the end of the first two weeks of January 2022, India has witnessed the birth of 2 more unicorns named Mama Earth, Fractal analytics.
As per the report published in the Economic Times dated Jan 15,2022, India - with 90 unicorns - is the third-largest unicorn hub behind the US (487) and China (301), and ahead of the UK (39).
Not only in the conventional sectors, Indian Unicorns are entering unconventional sectors and sub-sectors including, NBFCs, Conversational Messaging, Cryptocurrency Exchanges, D2C, Cloud Kitchens and many others.
Indian unicorns are also exploring the public listing avenues as a next step to realise the growth potential. Some big unicorn names that offered an IPO include Zomato, Nykaa, PolicyBazaar, Paytm and Freshworks, while many are already in line such as Delhivery, Mobikwik and CarDekho.
Startups as Employment Generators
Most of these startups have been successful in generating large scale employment. Startups in the country have been able to create an estimated thousands of new jobs over the year, taking the total jobs in the start-up ecosystem to more than half a million. As per reports, the recognized startups have contributed significantly to job creation, with 5,49,842 jobs reported by 48,093 startups with an average number of 11 employees per startup. About 1.7 lakh jobs were created by recognized startups in the 2020-2021 period alone. India needs to focus on further strengthening the startup ecosystem and target a million startups. This will not only help India to grow economically but also address the issues of employment as well.
Educational Institutions: Rekindling the Spirit
As per Angus Maddison, in his book, The Contours of World Economy, India had more than 35% of the total world GDP from Ist century until 18th Century.A deeper analysis of India's glorious past indicates that this was possible because of the strong education and innovation culture that was provided by the finest of the universities of those days including, Taxila University, Sharda University, Nalanda, Sompura, Odantpuri, Vallabhi, Kanthnoorshala and many more. These institutions became the center of excellence and produced scholars, scientists and innovators who produced amazing innovations that led India to be called as the Golden Sparrow.
In the contemporary world the global ranking of any country is influenced by its entrepreneurial activity in terms of its innovation, competitiveness and Job creation that helps a nation to progress and grow on social and economic indicators.
In the last few years education in India has re-ignited the entrepreneurial spirit of young minds leading to exponential growths of startups and unicorns.
The ever-growing entrepreneurial spirit of the young students has energized the institutional startup ecosystem. Institutes are playing a critical role in fostering innovation and entrepreneurship beyond functioning as a multidisciplinary knowledge hub. Indian technocrats and management professionals studying in various educational institutions are increasingly contributing towards the growth of startups in and unicorns in India. According to a study by a UK-based payroll and accounting firm, the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), ranks as the fourth-largest producer of unicorn startups in the world. As perEconomic Times, 30 out of 58 unicorn startup founders are graduates of IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur.In fact, every second founder of Indian startups that has transformed into a unicorn is an alumnus of one of four oldest Indian Institutes of Technology.
Finding New Opportunities
India being a developing nation with a huge number of challenges in various sectors will see a significant rise in the startup and unicorns in the coming days. The technology driven startups will find more opportunities for growth including Blockchain, Artificial intelligence (AI) and Big data attracting high early-stage funding deals. Five sub-sectors — agtech, blockchain, advanced manufacturing and Robotics, AI and big data, fintech — are growing in size at an astounding pace, with an average 107% rise in early-stage funding deals and 43% growth in exits. AI, Big Data and Analytics is the largest sub-sector, comprising nearly 27% of all global startups,
Other sectors like cybersecurity, EdTech, cleantech and gaming are also maturing at significant rates, seeing a collective growth of 33% in funding .
With such progress not only India can address the issues of employability and livelihood besides transforming certain sectors for their social and economic output.
Mr. Raj Nehru is Vice Chancellor of Shri Vishwakarma Skill University, Haryana and JC Bose University of Science & Technology, YMCA. A Corporate Leader turned Academician Mr. Nehru is Youngest, founding Vice Chancellor of India’s first and world’s 6th Skill University - Shri Vishwakarma Skill University, Haryana. He started his career with the Indian Army and then moved to Corporate Sector and spent two decades in (Pharmaceutical, IT&ITES, Manufacturing, Automobile and Engineering and Energy Sector) in various roles. He worked with IBM as Director Leadership Development and with Schneider Electric as Director – HR.