Problem: Globally, it’s quite difficult to get connected to startups that are becoming or already are unicorns. This post will be a bit different by focusing on the list and strategy of startup unicorns in India.
Solution: Recently, PJ (the former CEO of Paytm Money) tweeted an extremely interesting image, below.
Here is a highlight of all of those unicorns by industry along with a 1-line description.
Consumer Services
Zomato: “Explore curated lists of top restaurants, cafes, pubs, and bars in Delhi NCR, based on trends All collections in Delhi NCR.”
Quikr: “Find the latest classified ads for flats, jobs, cars, motorbikes, furniture, tools, personals and more for sale in India. Find buyers and sellers that suit your need. Advertise for free on Quikr.”
Hike: “Hike Messenger, also called Hike Sticker Chat, is an Indian freeware, cross-platform instant messaging (IM), Voice over IP (VoIP) application which was launched on 12 December 2012 by Kavin Bharti Mittal”
BigBasket: “The best online grocery store in India. bigbasket is an online supermarket for all your daily needs. Online shopping now made easy with a wide range of groceries and home needs.”
Swiggy: “Experience Swiggy's superfast delivery for food delivered fresh & on time Restaurants in your pocket Order from your favorite restaurants & track on the go, with the all-new Swiggy app.”
Infoedge: “Info Edge (India) Limited is an Indian pure play internet company that was founded by Sanjeev Bikhchandani in 1995. The company runs an online job portal Naukri.com, a matrimony website Jeevansathi.com, a real estate classifieds platform 99Acres.com and an educational website Shiksha.com.”
Ecommerce
Flipkart: “The company initially focused on book sales, before expanding into other product categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, home essentials, groceries, and lifestyle products. The service competes primarily with Amazon's Indian subsidiary, and domestic rival, Snapdeal.”
Shopclues: “ShopClues has revolutionized the conceptual Online Shopping in India with initiatives such as Ghar Wapsi Sale, Bigger than the Biggest Thank You Sale, #EkZeroKum Sale etc. Amongst many other shopping sites, ShopClues is the leader in unstructured categories like Daily Utilities, Garden Needs, Hardware, Kitchen Storage, and others.”
PayTm Mall: “Paytm Mall strives hard to make your online shopping a more pleasant and cost-effective experience by providing the top quality products at the best price rates in India. Our collection of products consist of electronic appliances, clothes, grocery, home and kitchen products, backpacks, automobiles, books and stationery, to name a few.”
LensKart: “Lenskart is the leading e-commerce portal for eyewear in India. It has revolutionised the eyewear industry in the country with its omni-channel approach. From an ever-growing number of offline stores across major cities in the country to innovative integration of technology while purchasing online”
Zoho: “Run your entire business with Zoho's suite of online productivity tools and SaaS applications. Over 50 million users trust us worldwide.”
Udaan: “Udaan is a B2B trade platform, designed specifically for small & medium businesses in India. It brings traders, wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers in India on to a single platform. With real insights into active trends, and great B2B trade features, Udaan brings to them the power of technology to scale & nurture their business.”
Firstcry: “India's Largest Online Store for newborn, baby & kids products. Shop from the best range of Toys, Diapers, Clothes, Footwear, Strollers, Car Seats, Furniture, Gifts, Books and more from the best baby brands”
Edtech
BYJU’s: “The Learning App is an Indian educational technology (edtech) and online tutoring firm founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran at Bangalore. In September 2020, it was the world's most valued edtech company with a valuation of $11.1 billion. Byju's claimed on 27 May 2020 that they had gained ₹2,800 crore revenue in FY20.”
Unacademy: “Prepare for examinations and take any number of courses from various topics on Unacademy - an education revolution.”
Enterprisetech
MuSigma: “Mu Sigma is an Indian decision sciences firm that primarily offers data analytics services. The firm's name is derived from the statistical terms "Mu (μ)" and "Sigma (σ)" which symbolize the mean and the standard deviation, respectively, of a probability distribution. Mu Sigma is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and has a global delivery center in Bangalore.”
PolicyBazaar: “Policybazaar, is an Indian insurance aggregator and a global financial technology company based in Gurugram, India. The company was founded in June 2008 by Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar. It provides a digital platform - website and app - where users compare financial services from major insurance companies. The startup is headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana, India and is the country's largest insurance aggregator. The group has also expanded operations to the United Arab Emirates.”
BillDesk: “BillDesk is an Indian online payment gateway company based in Mumbai, India. As of 2015, the company is worth USD 1 billion.”
Postman: “Postman is the world’s leading collaboration platform for API development. Postman's features simplify each step of building an API and streamline collaboration to help create better APIs—faster. More than 11 million developers and 500,000 organizations worldwide use Postman today.”
Freshworks: “With the new AI-powered Freshworks CRM, get a 360° view of your prospects and customers with the combined power of salesforce automation, marketing automation, chat, and telephony”
Icertis: “The Icertis platform structures and connects the critical contract information that defines how your business runs, so you can run it better. And our technology gets smarter with every transaction, so you can be ready for whatever the future brings.”
Druva: “Druva Inc. is a privately-held software company based in Sunnyvale, California. The company provides SaaS-based data protection and management products for corporations and government agencies. Druva products aggregate enterprise data from endpoints, data center, and cloud workloads for backup and restore, compliance monitoring, security, and other uses.”
Fintech
Zerodha: Online platform to invest in stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, and more. 3+ million Zerodha clients contribute to over 15% of all retail order volumes in India daily.
PineLabs: “Pine Labs is committed to help merchants grow their business exponentially with technology and capital.”
PayTM: “Paytm is currently available in 11 Indian languages and offers online use-cases like mobile recharges, utility bill payments, travel, movies, and events bookings as well as in-store payments at grocery stores, fruits and vegetable shops, restaurants, parking, tolls, pharmacies and educational institutions with the Paytm QR code.”
PhonePe: “One app for all things money. Pay bills, recharge, send money, buy gold, invest and shop at your favourite stores. Pay whenever you like, wherever you like”
EnergyTech
ReNew Power: “India’s leading renewable energy IPP (Independent Power Producer) with a capacity of 10.32 GW of which 5.56 GW is operational. We have utility scale wind and solar energy projects as well as distributed solar energy projects that generate energy for commercial and industrial customers.”
Others
Rivigo: “Rivigo’s goal is to make logistics human, faster, safer and more efficient. It identified the role of right technology at the workplace and thus, wanted a system which is not people but process-dependent, and at the same time flexible to meet the ever-changing needs of the sector.”
Inmobi: “InMobi is the world's leading Marketing Cloud. Our mobile data and technology platforms help global brands understand and engage connected consumers.”
Delhivery: “Delhivery’s aim is to build the operating system for commerce in India. We provide parcel transportation, warehousing, freight, reverse logistics, cross-border and technology services to over 10000 customers including all of India’s largest e-commerce companies and leading enterprises.”
Dreamn: “Dream11 provides a fantasy gaming platform for multiple sports such as cricket, football, basketball, kabaddi, hockey, volleyball, handball and baseball. It is an online game where users create a virtual teamof real-life players and earn points based on the performances of these players in real matches”
Travel Tech
MakeMyTrip: MakeMyTrip uses a real-time reservation database used worldwide to list flight tickets prices and availability. As airline tickets are sold or fares are changed dynamically, the flight ticket booking database gets updated to immediately reflect those changes.
OYO: “Stay safe at Sanitised budget hotels in over 230 cities, each available with standardized AC Rooms, Breakfast, LED TV, Wi-Fi, and Hygienic Washrooms. Enjoy a pleasant day wherever you go with OYO.”
Transport Tech
OLA: A cab aggregator app to an electric vehicle manufacturer. The company in 2017 had floated a subsidiary Ola Electric, which is now a unicorn in its own right with backers like Tiger Global, Matrix Partners and SoftBank. (Business Insider)
OLA Electric: In August 2020, Aggarwal in an email to employees said that the company plans to hire 2000 people – 1,000 engineers globally over the next quarter and another 1,000 people across other functions. “Looking forward, our aim is to build electric vehicle products and the required BaaS systems for a global market and across all product segments,” Aggarwal had said then and added that the future belongs to electric and connected mobility and that the team at Ola is working hard to bring out the electric vehicle soon. (Business Insider)
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)