OYO tops 25 most sought-after Linkedin startups list in India

Linkedin, the professional network firm, on Tuesday, revealed the top 25 startups list for India in 2018.

Hospitality startup OYO topped the chart, whereas fitness firm Cure.fit, on-demand delivery startup dunzo.in and logistics firm Rivigo followed it among the 25 startups made it to the list.

OYO is India’s largest hotel network with more than 100,000 rooms in 230 cities (compared to Marriott’s 23,000 and Taj Hotels’ 17,000). Over the last nine months, the budget hotel brand has ventured into Malaysia, China and the UK, said the Linkedin blog.

The list ranged from B2B (business-to-business) companies to consumer tech firms. Fifty per cent of the startups selected belongs to B2B whereas tech firms constituted 20 per cent with companies like Nineleaps Zapr Media Labs, BrowsterStack, SigTuple and Exadatum.

In English news genre, Republic TV, led by Arnab Goswami grabbed the seventh spot on the list. According to Linkedin, Goswami led news channel was successful in attracting viewers and generating revenue of around Rs 155 crore for FY18.

Among major hubs for startups, Bengaluru grabbed the top position. Out of the 25 companies on the list, 11 are based in Bengaluru, seven in Mumbai, three in Gurugram and two each in New Delhi and Pune.

LinkedIn measured startups based on four pillars, employment growth, engagement, job interest and attraction of top talent. The time frame taken into account ranged from July last year to June 2018.

The eligibility criteria for top startups required them to be at least 7 years old, have at least 50 employees, privately held and headquartered in India.

This is the first edition of most sought after startups list by Linkedin. Over the years, Linkedin has maintained a steady growth in the Indian market. It crossed the 50 million mark in July.

India is now the second largest market for Linkedin after the US, which has 150 million users. It plans to create more localise offering to accelerate its growth.

In the last two years, it came up with two products Lite Website in 2016 and Lite mobile app in 2017, to cater to the local market.

For Linkedin, the talent solutions business contributes larger share in its revenue in India.