India is third largest hub for Unicorns after US and China

Startups ecosystem in India has been growing at a decent pace in India. While the number of tech startups has increased in the past few years, a noticeable amount of them are growing big and achieving their true potential.

India has emerged as third largest startup ecosystem with 21 Unicorns, as per the inaugural Hurun Global Unicorn List 2019. Indian startups that figured in the list of Unicorns included One97 Communications' Paytm ($10 billion), cab aggregator Ola Cabs ($6 billion), online educator Byju’s ($6 billion), and hospitality brand OYO ($5 billion).

The report listed startups that became Unicorns before June this year. In the last three months, India added four more Unicorns.

China was the number one country with the most number of Unicorns 206, three more than the US, which had 203 Unicorns. Both the countries constituted more than 80% of startups with valuation over $1 billion.

India can catch up with top two nations, only if the regulatory and business environment are poised to capture the demographic dividend, said Anas Rahman Junaid, Chief Researcher, Hurun Global Rich List.

Among the top ten Unicorns in the world, six belonged to the US. Though, the top three belong to China.

With a valuation of $150 billion, China-based Ant Financial emerged as the most valuable startup in the world. Beijing-based content discovery platform ByteDance and cab-hailing platform Didi Chuxing were most valuable second and third Unicorns in the world. From the US, Infor, JUUL Labs, Airbnb and SpaceX, WeWork and Stripe figured in top ten.

Interestingly, most of these unicorns are still in growth mode and have not turned profitable.

A major number of Unicorns belong to e-commerce and fintech, about 31%, followed by cloud and Artificial Intelligence.

Among investors, Sequoia came up as the most successful investment platform with an investment in one in five of the world's Unicorns. It was followed by Softbank, Tencent, Tiger Global, IDG and Goldman Sachs.

As per the report, globally, there are 494 unicorns based in 25 countries and 118 cities. All the startups are worth $3.4 billion on average and $1.7 trillion in total.

These are the industries that are disrupting the world economy, initiating the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and widely considered to hold the key to the future, said Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher.