Unicorn club: From 1mg to InMobi, here're 100-plus start-ups in India

Bengaluru-based neo-bank platform 'Open' became India's 100th unicorn in May 2022

The Indian start-up ecosystem achieved a milestone on May 2, 2022, when Bengaluru-based neo-bank platform 'Open' became the country's 100th unicorn. 

What makes the development even more commendable is that it was eleven years earlier, in 2011, that the country registered its first billion-dollar enterprise in mobile advertising technology firm InMobi. 

As of February 2023, the country has more than 100 enterprises in this realm, with 1mg having acquired the unicorn status in September 2022.

India is the world's third-largest start-up ecosystem, after the US and China, and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have emerged as the lead source of unicorn founders in the country. IIT alumni have been the force behind twelve such billion-dollar firms, including Zomato, Flipkart, Ola, ShopClues and Snapdeal.

So what drove the growth of this exclusive set of companies?

Start-Up India

Since the launch of the 'Start-Up India' initiative in 2016, businesses have had governmental support and technological advancements in terms of better online connectivity and digitisation, attracting marquee investors and building global solutions. The unicorns are spread across the country, from Bengaluru to Delhi-NCR to Mumbai. A surge in the number of start-ups or unicorns creates greater job opportunities and spawns innovation, as entrepreneurs pool funds in new businesses.

Over the past few years, the Indian government has introduced several initiatives to boost the start-up ecosystem to augment investor confidence. The steps among 19 specific action plans include the flagship Start-up India initiative, Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Fund of Funds by Sidbi, The Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) scheme, tax benefits and simplification of the start-up registration process.

What is a unicorn?

Unicorn, a term coined by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, refers to a privately held start-up valued at over $1 billion, according to the Fortune. Some popular Indian unicorns are Dream11, Razorpay, Meesho, CRED, and Unacademy.

Start-ups whose valuation exceeds $10 billion are known as 'decacorn' or a 'super unicorn'. WeWork, Dropbox and SpaceX are a few examples.

What is a start-up?

In India, an entity is considered a start-up if it is incorporated as a private company (under the Companies Act, 2013), or a partnership firm or a limited liability partnership. Such an entity must not be more than ten years old. Start-ups in India are recognised by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).

Business Standard has compiled a list of 100-plus unicorns/start-ups in India

5ire, founded by Pratik Gauri, Prateek Dwivedi and Vilma Mattila in August 2021, is a fifth-generation blockchain unicorn. 5ire aims to solve environmental concerns of blockchain, build a user-centric, sustainability-driven blockchain ecosystem aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and create a 'for-benefit' finance platform to leapfrog to a Fifth Industrial Revolution (5IR or Industry 5.0).

Unicorn status year: 2022

OneCard, a mobile-first credit card firm, operates in the credit card disbursing sector. It was founded in 2019 by Anurag Sinha, Rupesh Kumar, and Vibhav Hathi. OneCard, a technology solution provider for banks, provides an internationally valid lifetime-free Visa signature credit card managed by fintech company FPL Technologies Pvt Ltd. 
 

Unicorn status year: 2022

LeadSquared is a sales execution CRM and SaaS platform launched in 2014 under the banner of MarketXpander Services (founded in 2011) by IITian entrepreneurs Nilesh Patel, Sudhakar Gorti and Prashant Singh. It serves over 1,000 businesses globally in verticals like education, financial services, healthcare, internet marketplaces, real estate and other fast-moving B2C businesses.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Purplle, an online beauty products retailer, was founded in 2012 by IIT alumni Manish Taneja (IIT Delhi) and Rahul Dash (IIT Kharagpur, IIM Ahmedabad). It has over 1,000 brands and nearly 50,000 products, available on its website and app. Purplle has tie-ups with thousands of salons to help customers choose the best service. the firm also offers complete logistical and warehousing services to its sellers.

Unicorn status year: 2022

PhysicsWallah is an ed-tech start-up founded in 2016 by YouTube STEM educator Alakh Pandey, who was later joined by tech executive Prateek Maheshwari. PhysicsWallah offers online and offline courses and study materials for JEE, NEET and other engineering entrance and state board exams. The ed-tech platform offers live classes, video lectures, test series and exercises for the aforementioned exams.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Open, a Bengaluru-based neo-banking fintech company, became India's 100th unicorn on May 2, 2022. It was founded in 2017 by Anish Achuthan, Ajeesh Achuthan, Mabel Chacko, and Deena Jacob. Among its products suite, Open offers India's largest business banking platform for SMEs and digital banking platform for small & micro businesses. 

Unicorn status year: 2022

Games24x7 is a multi-gaming start-up founded in 2006 by Trivikraman Thampy and Bhavin Pandya, engineering alumni of IIT Bombay. The company offers three online gaming services -- RummyCircle, My11Circle and U Games.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Oxyzo, OfBusiness' financial subsidiary, is a tech-enabled smart financing solution provider established in 2017 by Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra. Oxyzo uses technology to crunch data and provides purchase financing to businesses, giving out cash-flow based loans in a credit-starved country where small and medium businesses struggle to get working capital.

Unicorn status year: 2022

CommerceIQ is an e-commerce analytics platform that uses machine learning, analytics, and automation to aggregate data across sales, marketing, and supply chain operations, helping brands gain shoppers at the moment of purchase and maintain customer loyalty. The San Francisco-based CommerceIQ was founded in 2012 by Guru Hariharan.

Univorn status year: 2022

Amagi is a cloud-based SaaS platform for broadcast and connected TV offers creation, distribution, and monetisation tools for live, linear, and on-demand channels across cable, OTT, and Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) platforms. Amagi was founded in 2008 by Baskar, along with Srinivasan K A and Srividhya Srinivasan.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Yubi (formerly CredAvenue), is a debt marketplace fintech firm that helps banks, NBFCs and FinTech platforms to leverage technology and drive synergies. Founded by Gaurav Kumar and Vineet Sukumar in 2017, CredAvenue helps banks and NBFCs drive 20-30 conversations leading to an increase in disbursements. CredAvenue offers a portfolio of five platforms: CredLoan, CredCo-Lend, Plutus, CredSCF and CredPool.  

Unicorn status year: 2022

Hasura, a technology start-up founded in 2017 by Gopal and Rajoshi Ghosh, provides data access solutions to help organisations speed up product delivery by instantly connecting data and services to applications with GraphQL APIs. The company products include Hasura Community Edition (CE), Hasura Cloud and Hasura Enterprise Edition (EE).

Unicorn status year: 2022

Uniphore is conversational service automation (CSA) solutions provider incubated in 2008 by Ravi Saraogi and Umesh Sachdev. The customer service platform's conversational automation engine delivers powerful and innovative solutions to help enterprises not just survive but thrive amidst all the demands placed on them by customers. Uniphore offers four core services: U-Analyze, U-Self-Serve, U-Trust and U-Assist.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Xpressbees, an e-commerce logistics provider, enables same-day delivery service across cities and next-day regional delivery service across 1,000-plus towns and cities through warehousing facilities. Founded in 2015, Xpressbees is present across 3,000 cities, serving over 20,000 pin codes, and delivers over 1.5 million packages per day. Services that Xpressbees offers are -- B2C Xpress, B2B Xpress, Cross-border Logistics and 3PL (Third Party Logistics).

Unicorn status year: 2022

Livspace, a home interior and renovation platform, provides a three-sided marketplace and a design automation platform that connects homeowners, certified designers and vendors. Founded in 2014 by Anuj Srivastava, Ramakant Sharma and Shagufta Anurag, Livspace uses data science-enabled algorithms to match homeowners with designers (based on style preferences, budget, scope of work and timelines).

Unicorn status year: 2022

ElasticRun is a B2B e-commerce company that provides platform for small Kirana stores in the deep rural parts of India to source supplies mainly FMCG products. Founded by Sandeep Deshmukh, Shitiz Bansal and Saurabh Nigam in 2016, ElasticRun has built a highly scalable national distribution network which gives large businesses instant access to the rural kirana shops. 

Unicorn status year: 2022

DealShare is a social e-commerce start-up founded by Rajat Shikhar, Sankar Bora, Sourjyendu Medda, and Vineet Rao in 2018. DealShare is known for pioneering the community group buying (CGB) model in India. DealShare provides customers with a curated assortment of products, ranging from grocery to essentials that are required for daily use at highly competitive price points.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Darwinbox is a technology start-up with a cloud-based HR technology platform which caters to an organisation's HR needs across the employee lifecycle (hire-to-retire). The IIM/IIT/XLRI alumnus -- Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Chennamaneni founded Darwinbox in 2015.

Unicorn status year: 2022

LEAD School, a Mumbai-based ed-tech start-up, was founded by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah in 2012. LEAD School began operations by running affordable schools and teaching middle-school students. The company then built its platform, the Lead Integrated System, which it began offering in 2017 with a mission to make good schools accessible and affordable to every child.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Fractal Analytics, a global provider of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, is a strategic analytics partner to Fortune 500 companies and helps them power every human decision in the enterprise by bringing analytics & AI to the decision-making process. Founded in 2000 by Ramakrishna Reddy, Pranay Agrawal and Srikanth Velamakanni, Fractal has built several cutting-edge AI product startups within its ecosystem across industries.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Mamaearth is a Gurugram-based personal care D2C start-up founded in 2016 by husband-wife duo Varun Alagh and Ghazal Alagh. It is Asia’s first made-safe certified brand that offers 100 per cent toxin-free and natural skincare, hair care and baby care products.

Unicorn status year: 2021

GlobalBees, a leading roll-up e-commerce company, was founded in May 2021 by Nitin Agarwal and Supam Maheshwari. The firm has a diverse portfolio of companies across categories such as homecare, beauty and personal care, nutrition & wellness, fashion jewellery, and eyewear. GlobalBees is an aggregator of digital brands that transforms marketplace sellers into international brands.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Pristyn Care, a health-tech startup specialising in secondary-care surgeries, provides services such as diagnostics support, health-insurance claim processing and hospital admission paperwork. Pristyn Care was founded in 2018 by Harsimarbir Singh, Dr Vaibhav Kapoor and Dr Garima Sawhney, with a vision to provide a seamless surgical experience by offering patient-centric healthcare services.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Slice is a fintech unicorn founded in 2016 by Deepak Malhotra and Rajan Bajaj and it offers an alternative to traditional credit cards. On its website, Slice introduces itself as India’s best credit card challenger.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Upstox, which was set up in 2009 by Ravi Kumar, Kavitha Subramanian and Shrini Viswanath, is an online stockbroking firm which provides end-to-end support for IPO applications via WhatsApp, empowering customers by easing the process of account opening. Upstox Pro-web 3.0 allows high-frequency options to traders to view their order and portfolio history along with the scrip details on the charts, without having to go to their portfolio.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Spinny is an online pre-owned car retailing platform that was established in 2015 by Mohit Gupta, Niraj Singh and Ramanshu Mahaur. Spinny operates across the entire value chain of pre-owned cars, embedding superior technology and processes to deliver a premium experience to customers.

Unicorn status year: 2021

NoBroker, a real estate tech start-up, was founded in 2014 by Akhil Gupta, Amit Kumar Agarwal and Saurabh Garg. Ranging from rental, sale or resale to post transaction services like loan, packers and movers, legal documentation, online rent payment, and interiors, NoBroker offers a bouquet of real estate services.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Mensa Brands, a D2C firm, builds digital-first brands from India by partnering with them to accelerate their growth in both marketplaces and D2C channels in India and globally. Founded in 2013 by Ajay Agarwal and Komal Agarwal, Mensa invests in and scales up digital-first brands across diverse categories including fashion and apparel, home and garden, beauty and personal care.

Unicorn status year: 2021

CureFit, an integrated fitness start-up, was founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori. CureFit aims to address preventive healthcare through a combination of engagement, coaching and delivery using a mix of online and offline channels.

 

Unicorn status year: 2021

Acko, a digital insurance provider, services embedded insurance products like mobility and gadget insurance across large digital consumer platforms like Amazon, MakeMyTrip, Ola, Urban Company, Bajaj Finance and others. Acko, founded in 2016 by Ruchi Deepak and Varun Dua, also covers nearly a million gig workers in India through partnerships with companies, including Zomato and Swiggy.

Unicorn status year: 2021

MobiKwik, a digital payments fintech firm, was founded in 2009 by Bipin Singh, Upasana Taku and Chandan Joshi. It offers several financial services, runs a digital wallet, allows payments for utilities, and provides services such as buy-now-pay-later (BNPL). MobiKwik commenced operations as a Mobile Wallet and has since expanded its product offerings to Buy Now Pay Later, Payment Gateway, Wealthtech & Insurtech.  

Unicorn status year: 2021

CarDekho, founded in 2007 by Amit Jain and Anurag Jain, is a full-stack auto tech platform that operates auto portals such as CarDekho.com, Gaadi.com, ZigWheels.com, BikeDekho.com, and PowerDrift.com. The cars can be searched for their preferred manufacturer, model, variants, manufacturing year, km driven, and budget, among others, and buy their desired car from the CarDekho platform.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Rebel Foods, a cloud kitchen company, was founded in 2011 by Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee as Faasos and rechristened Rebel Foods in October 2018. Rebel Foods is parent to brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Ovenstory Pizza, Mandarin Oak, The Good Bowl, SLAY Coffee, Sweet Truth and Wendy's, among others. 

Unicorn status year: 2021

Urban Company (formerly UrbanClap), the tech-enabled home services marketplace, helps customers book services such as beauty treatments, massages, therapies, cleaning, painting, plumbing, carpentry, pest control, appliance repair, and many more. The company was launched in 2014 by Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra.

Unicorn status year: 2021

CoinSwitch Kuber is a cryptocurrency trading platform founded in 2017 by Ashish Singhal, Govind Soni and Vimal Sagar Tiwari as a global aggregator of cryptocurrency exchanges. The company launched its India-exclusive crypto platform CoinSwitch Kuber in June 2020.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Licious is a D2C tech company which sells fresh meat and seafood online. Licious was founded by Hanjura, a Bangalore University science graduate, along with Gupta, a chartered accountant, after a poor meat-buying experience. After successfully testing its tech and business model, Licious launched its service in 2015. Licious serves over 2 million orders every month, with over 90 per cent repeat consumption across markets.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Vedantu, an edtech start-up offers tutoring courses to young students from 3 years old to 18 years old, as well as preparation for competitive exams. Students can take individual or group classes on its app or website. Classes are delivered in real-time and interactive online learning environment. Its offerings include classes in public speaking, financial literacy, entrepreneurship and mental wellness.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Apna, a digital hiring start-up for grey and blue-collar workforce, helps the job seekers with setting up simple profiles requiring only their name, age and skills, generating a virtual business card. Apna also offers training. The app provides micro-courses and allows users to access local job opportunities, network with peers, practice for interviews, share their accomplishments, and gain new skills. Apna was founded by Nirmit Parikh in 2019.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Mobile Premier League (MPL) is Asia’s largest e-sports and mobile gaming platform founded in 2018 by Sai Srinivas Kiran G, Shubh Malhotra and Shubham Malhotra. MPL has games across categories, such as fantasy, quizzing, esports and casual games on its Android and iOS apps with millions of users across India, Indonesia and the US.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Mu Sigma, a data analytics firm, was established in 2004 by Dhiraj Rajaram. Mu Sigma helps enterprises systematise data-driven decision-making through data mining and machine learning consulting.

Unicorn status year: 2013

BillDesk, a digital payments platform, was founded in 2000 by M N Srinivasu, Karthik Ganapathy, and Ajay Kaushal and is the largest and oldest player in the B2B2C payment space. The company gets commissions from banks and merchants to facilitate transactions. BillDesk provides customers payment options, including credit cards and online wallets, to carry out purchases.

Unicorn status year: 2018

Delhivery is a Gurugram-based logistics start-up that was founded by Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, Mohit Tandon, Sahil Barua and Suraj Saharan in 2011. It is India's leading supply chain services company in the domestic and international space. Delhivery provides supply-chain solutions to a diverse base of active customers such as e-commerce marketplaces, direct-to-consumer etailers and enterprises and various SMEs.

Unicorn status year: 2019

MindTickle, a cloud-hosted B2B Saas firm, provides what it calls sales readiness technology: artificial intelligence-based sales tools to improve selling, product knowledge and awareness of the competition. Companies can customize Mindtickle’s templates with their own content and data, as well as analyse and incorporate customer feedback. MindTickle was founded in 2011 by Deepak Diwakar, Krishna Depura, Mohit Garg and Nishant Mungali.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Polygon is an Ethereum blockchain start-up that provides tools for scaling and infrastructure development of blockchain technology Ethereum. Polygon allows developers to build and scale ethereum blockchain-based applications for projects related to decentralized finance, Web3 and the metaverse, among others. The firm was founded by Anurag Arjun, Jaynti Kanani, Mihailo Bjelic and Sandeep Nailwal in 2018.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Rivigo is a full-stack logistics services provider founded in 2014 by Deepak Garg and Gazal Kalra. Rivigo provides three kinds of products; full truck-load, express cargo and cold chain. It also has a relay-as-a-service (RaaS) model to bring benefits of its relay trucking model to fleet owners and truck pilots (drivers) in India.

Unicorn status year: 2018

Druva, established in 2008 by Jaspreet Singh, Milind Borate and Ramani Kothandaraman, is a data-protection start-up. Its patented technology delivers all-in-one backup, disaster recovery, archival and analytics solutions and provides 360-degree visibility and control across all environments.

Unicorn status year: 2019

Icertis, a contract intelligence company, was founded by Samir Bodas and Monish Darda in 2009. Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform turns contracts from static documents into strategic advantage by structuring and connecting the critical contract information that defines how an organization runs.

Unicorn status year: 2019

CitiusTech is a leading provider of consulting and digital technology to healthcare and life sciences companies. It started in 2005 by Jagdish Moorjani and Rizwan Koita.

Unicorn status year: 2019

Postman is a platform for application programming interface (API) development and its services are used by firms to build new applications faster, modernise legacy architectures and scale up business processes. Postman was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, and Abhijit Kane.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Unacademy is an education technology (edtech) company founded in 2015 by Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, Roman Saini and Sachin Gupta. Unacademy is an online platform with educators creating educational videos and offering live interactive classes with access to exam categories for the learners. The company offers test series, personalised feedback and one-on-one interactions with educators for various competitive exams.

Unicorn status year: 2020

RazorPay is a fintech company that helps small businesses and big enterprises modernise their financial infrastructure by providing intelligent automated payment and business banking solutions to manage their money flow end-to-end. RazorPay was established by Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar in 2014.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Cars24, an e-commerce platform for pre-owned vehicles, allows customers to shop from over 10,000 cars on the platform, finance and select doorstep delivery with additional features of 6-month warranty and no questions asked return policy. Cars24 was founded by Gajendra Jangid, Mehul Agrawal, Ruchit Agarwal and Vikram Chopra in 2015.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Zenoti, founded in 2010 by Sudheer Koneru and Dheeraj Koneru, offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to spas and salons. Zenoti’s cloud software solution is designed to manage all operational aspects of the spa and salon business, including appointment book, billing and customer relationship management capabilities.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Dailyhunt is a local language content and news aggregator platform founded in 2007 by Umang Bedi and Virendra Gupta. Dailyhunt serves millions of users every month, offering content in several languages from a licensed creator ecosystem of content partners and individual content creators.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Glance is a mobile lock-screen content company backed by Google and owned by Softbank-backed InMobi. It was founded by Naveen Tewari in 2019. Glance enables its users to access a wide range of content, including live interactive, on their smartphone lockscreen.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Blinkit (formerly Grofers), founded by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar in 2013, is an online grocery delivery platform in the quick commerce sector. Blinkit is an online delivery service that allows consumers to order products and receive them within 10 minutes. Consumers can buy products available at brick-and-mortar stores in their city through the Blinkit app.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Lenskart, which offers prescription-based and fashion eyewear, was established in 2010 by  Peyush Bansal, Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi. Lenskart mostly sells its own products from its online platform.

Unicorn status year: 2019

FirstCry, formally known as BrainBees Solutions Pvt, runs an online store featuring products for children and expecting mothers. FirstCry claims to be Asia's largest online store for baby and kids products and has thousands of products from over 1,000 top international and Indian brands. Founded in 2010 by Supam Maheshwari, Amitava Saha, Prashant Jadhav and Sanket Hattimattur.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Mohalla Tech, parent company of short-video platform Moj and regional social network ShareChat, was founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Singh in 2015.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Ola Electric Mobility (OEM) is Ola's electric vehicle (EV) arm launched in 2017 by Ankit Jain and Anand Shah. OEM runs several pilots involving charging solutions, battery swapping stations, and deploying vehicles across two, three and four-wheeler segments.

Unicorn status year: 2019

Udaan, founded in 2016, is an Indian business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform. It operates in categories including lifestyle, electronics, FMCG, pharma, home and kitchen, staples, fruits and vegetables, toys, and general merchandise. Udaan was founded by Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar and Vaibhav Gupta in 2016.

Unicorn status year: 2018

BigBasket is an online delivery grocery platform that offers products across categories ranging from fruits, vegetables, staples to packaged foods, personal care and home care. BigBasket was founded in 2011 by Hari Menon, V S Sudhakar, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari and V S Ramesh.

Unicorn status year: 2019

Renew Power is one of the largest renewable energy independent power producers in India and globally. Founded by Sumant Sinha in 2011, ReNew develops, builds, owns, and operates utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, and hydro projects.

Unicorn status year: 2017

Zerodha, founded in 2010 by Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath, is a financial services company that offers retail as well as institutional broking, currencies and commodities trading, mutual funds, and bonds. Zerodha is derived from the words “zero” and “rodha”, which means barrier in Sanskrit.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Paytm Mall is an e-commerce subsidiary of Paytm. In February 2017, Paytm launched Paytm Mall app, which allows consumers to shop from registered sellers. Paytm Mall is a B2C model inspired by China's largest B2C retail platform TMall.

Unicorn status year: 2018

Paytm is a digital payments company owned by One97 Communications. Paytm offers online services including merchant payments, insurance and gold sales, movie and flight ticketing, and bank deposits and remittance. It was founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma in 2010.

 

Unicorn status year: 2015

Fintech firm BharatPe provides payment technology and digital lending for offline businesses, including kiranas. It was incorporated in March 2018 by Shashvat Nakrani and Bhavik Koladiya. BharatPe’s customers include kirana stores, small businesses (chains with 4-5 stores), corporate cafeterias and small restaurants.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Founded in 2011 by Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal, BrowserStack is a privately-held tech company that offers software testing on the cloud and has over 50,000 customers and more than four million developer signups. BrowserStack's products help developers build bug-free software for the 5 billion internet users accessing websites and mobile applications through millions of combinations of digital environments.

Unicorn status year: 2021

BlackBuck, an Indian logistics start-up founded in 2015 by Rajesh Yabaji, Chanakya Hridaya, and Rama Subramaniam, uses technology to match a trucker with a shipper real-time to enable transparency, higher truck utilization, better shipper services levels, and efficient pricing. It also facilitates services around trucking, by providing fleet cards, tyres, insurance and working capital credit to truckers.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Chargebee, which helps businesses manage billing and revenue, was established in 2011 by Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, Saravanan K P and Thiyagarajan T. Chargebee allows individuals, small businesses, and enterprises to automate subscriptions, billing, invoicing, payments and revenue recognition processes. It supports payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree, WorldPay, and PayPal.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Tata group-owned 1mg, a health technology platform, started its diagnostics services in 2016 by Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal and Vikas Chauhan. The pharmacy firm is focused on online diagnostics and home collection of samples and has third-party partners for radiology tests.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Shiprocket, a shipping and logistics solutions provider, was founded in 2017 by Saahil Goel, Vishesh Khurana, Gautam Kapoor and Akshay Gulati. The firm provides a technology stack to help retailers integrate their shopping websites on Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, Zoho, or others.

Unicorn status year: 2022

Founded by Byju Raveendran in 2011, Byju’s is one of the emerging edtech leaders in online learning in the country. The educational technology company is aimed at improving learning for high school kids and offers students a model of learning by combining the best of offline and online learning methodologies.

Unicorn status year: 2018

CoinDCX, India's first cryptocurrency unicorn, was founded by Neeraj Khandelwal and Sumit Gupta in 2018. The firm provides users single-point access to a diverse suite of crypto-based financial products and services that are backed by security processes and insurance. It offers solutions around crypto investing, crypto trading and crypto literacy.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Credit card bill payment platform CRED was established by serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah in 2018 for people to pay their credit card bills and earn points. It has since expanded into lending, e-commerce payments, advertising for brands, and providing short-term credit via Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Digit Insurance, a Bengaluru-based general insurance company offers health, motor and travel insurance services. The firm was founded in 2017 by Kamesh Goyal. Digit has served millions of customers across car, bike, health and travel insurance, according to its website. Digit sold its first policy in October 2017 managed to register profits on IFRS basis in just three years and entered the unicorn club in January 2021.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Fantasy sports platform Dream11 caters to everything a sports fan needs. It allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, handball, basketball, volleyball, rugby, futsal, American baseball and football. In April 2019, Dream11, founded by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth in 2008, became the first Indian fantasy sport firm to become a unicorn.

Unicorn status year: 2019

Droom, an AI-dri­ven online automobile marketplace founded in 2014 by Sandeep Aggarwal, facilitates automobile buying and selling online through a combination of our asset-light automobile e-commerce platform along with a technology-driven vertically integrated proprietary ecosystem of products and services for the automobile industry.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Founded in 2008 by Nishant Pitti, Rikant Pitti, and Prashant Pitti, EaseMyTrip is an online travel company which provides hotel bookings, air tickets, holiday packages, bus bookings, and white-label services. It has offices across various Indian cities, including Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Its international offices (as subsidiary companies) are located in Singapore, the UAE and the UK.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Education technology (edtech) start-up Eruditus is an e-learning and digital educational content distribution platform which offers professional development programmes to working professionals. Founded by Ashwin Damera and Chaitanya Kalipatnapu in 2010, Eruditus runs on a partnership model with top global universities offering courses in coding, data science, fintech, block chain, and entrepreneurship.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Flipkart, founded by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal as an online book retailer in 2007, is one of the biggest e-commerce companies in India. Flipkart is a part of the Walmart-owned Flipkart Group, which also includes group companies Flipkart Wholesale, Myntra, and Cleartrip.

Unicorn status year: 2012

Nasdaq-listed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firm Freshworks offers cloud-based software solutions for businesses. The company was founded by Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy as Freshdesk in 2010 and was rebranded as Freshworks in 2017. Freshworks makes a variety of business software tools, from customer relationship management to help-desk software.

Unicorn status year: 2018

Gupshup, founded in 2004 by Beerud Sheth, offers a single messaging application programming interface (API) for channels across voice, text, and chat to enable businesses to create frictionless conversations with their customers. It serves verticals including banking, insurance, e-commerce, retail, gaming, and healthcare.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Groww is an online investment platform that provides an objective evaluation of various investment opportunities through stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and IPOs. It was founded in 2017 by former Flipkart employees Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Innovaccer, a healthtech start-up, was incorporated in 2014 by Abhinav Shashank, Kanav Hasija and Sandeep Gupta. Innovaccer provides a software-as-a-solution (SaaS) platform that helps its clients connect healthcare data across multiple systems and settings.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Infra.Market is a construction materials marketplace which was founded in 2016 by Souvik Sengupta and Aaditya Sharda. The firm leverages technology to provide an enhanced procurement experience for all players in the sector and caters to both institutional customers and retail outlets.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Info Edge (India) is among the leading pure-play internet companies in India and was incorporated on May 1, 1995 by Sanjeev Bikhchandani. The company runs leading internet businesses like Naukri.com, Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com and Shiksha.com, among other websites. The company also owns Quadrangle and Naukri Gulf.

Unicorn status year: 2014

Founded in 1999, Indiamart is one of the largest Indian B2B e-commerce marketplaces for business products and services. It provides a platform to small & medium enterprises (SMEs), large enterprises as well as individuals.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Started by Deep Kalra in 2000, the Gurugram-headquartered MakeMyTrip (MMT) provides online travel services including airline tickets, domestic and international holiday packages, hotel reservations, bus and railway tickets.

Unicorn status year: 2010

Meesho, an e-commerce platform, was started by IIT-Delhi graduates Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in December 2015. Meesho provides small and independent entrepreneurs with products and tools to start, maintain, and grow their businesses.

 

Unicorn status year: 2021

MapmyIndia is a digital mapping and geospatial software firm. It builds digital maps, geospatial software, and location-based IoT technologies and has served more than 2,000 enterprise customers since inception. The company pioneered digital mapping in India in 1995.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Moglix is one of the Asia’s largest B2B commerce and digital supply chain solutions companies in the industrial and MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) procurement space. Its global sourcing and delivery footprint spans across enterprises, MSMEs and suppliers across India and the Middle East. The firm was established in 2015 by Rahul Garg.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Founded by Falguni Nayar in 2015, the FSN E-Commerce Ventures-owned Nykaa is an e-commerce firm engaged in the business of manufacturing, selling and distribution of beauty, wellness, fitness, personal care, health care, skin care, hair care products on the online platforms or websites such as e-commerce, m-commerce, internet, intranet as well as through physical stores, stalls, general trade and modern trade etc.

Unicorn status year: 2020

OFB Tech (OfBusiness) is a tech-enabled platform that facilitates raw material procurement and credit for SMEs with focus in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors. It was founded in 2015 by Asish Mohapatra, Ruchi Kalra, Bhuvan Gupta, Vasant Sridhar and Nitin Jain.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Ola is India’s largest mobility platform and one of the world’s largest ride-hailing companies, serving 250+ cities across India, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Founded in 2010 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, the Ola app offers mobility solutions by connecting customers to drivers and a wide range of vehicles across bikes, auto-rickshaws, metered taxis, and cabs.

 

Unicorn status year: 2014

Founded in 1998 by Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg and Tarun Upadhyay to provide retail automation solutions to petroleum companies, the merchant commerce platform Pine Labs now offers services and tools such as inventory management and payment terminals to merchants across Asia and the Middle East.

Unicorn status year: 2020

Policybazaar.com, the flagship platform of PB Fintech, is an online insurance marketplace in the country which distributes products of insurance companies, which include life, general, and standalone health insurance companies. The firm was establoshed in 2008 by Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal and Sarbvir Singh.

Unicorn status year: 2018

Payments and financial services company PhonePe was founded in December 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, Burzin Engineer and it has emerged as one of India’s largest payments apps. The company, one of the largest drivers of UPI transactions, has millions of registered users, implying more than one in four Indians use its services.

 

Unicorn status year: 2018

PharmEasy is a consumer healthcare app that provides consumers with on-demand, home delivered access to a wide range of prescription, OTC pharmaceutical, other consumer healthcare products, comprehensive diagnostic test services, and teleconsultations thereby serving their healthcare needs. It was founded in 2015 by Dharmil Sheth and Dhaval Shah.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Hospitality and travel-tech firm or hotel aggregator OYO Hotels & Homes was founded by Ritesh Agarwal in 2013. OYO is an Indian multinational hospitality chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes, and living spaces.

Unicorn status year: 2018

E-commerce platform ShopClues was founded in 2011 by Sanjay Sethi, Sandeep Aggarwal and Radhika Aggarwal. The firm also operates Smartship and Momoe as enterprise services and Ezonow as a social commerce platform.

Unicorn status year: 2016

ShareChat is a video-sharing social media platform which allows users to post online content in several Indian languages. It was started in 2015 by Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan, Bhanu Singh. The comapny has social media brands such as ShareChat App and Moj under its portfolio.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Started by Pranay Chulet in 2008, the online classifieds marketplace Quikr has a slew of online businesses covering real estate, discover and bookings, jobs search, used-goods buying and selling, and home services.

Unicorn status year: 2015

Started in 2015 by Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli and Ravijot Chugh, the online education platform upGrad is one of the integrated life-long learning tech companies. The high edtech major offers online programs to working professionals, college students and corporates in the fields of IT, data science, management and technology.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Bengaluru-headquartered Swiggy is India’s leading on-demand food and grocery delivery platform. The food tech company was founded in 2014 by Sriharsha Majety Nandan Reddy.

 

Unicorn status year: 2018

The e-commerce firm Snapdeal was started in 2010 by Wharton alumnus Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. The company says it caters to the so-called value e-commerce segment by selling "value-for-money", or more affordable products via its shopping website and app.

Unicorn status year: 2014

Founded by serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia and Ramki Gaddipati in 2015, fintech firm Zeta provides a full-stack cloud-native neo-banking platform for issuance of credit, debit and prepaid products.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Zomato is an online food delivery and restaurant aggregator company founded by Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah in 2008. The food tech firm provides information, menus and reviews of restaurants as well as delivery options from partner restaurants in select cities.

 

Unicorn status year: 2015

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) major Zoho Corporation offers web-based business tools, including operating system software for businesses, software for customer relationship management, human resource management, enterprise collaboration platform, and GST-compliant accounting software. Thr firm was founded by Sridhar Vembu, Tony G. Thomas, Sreenivas Kanumuru in 1996.

Unicorn status year: 2021

Global manufacturing platform Zetwerk, founded in 2018 by Amrit Acharya, provides communication solutions to Indian defence units, government research facilities like DRDO and ISRO and enterprise clients like Carlisle, Tata, AVTEC, BEL, and HAL.

Unicorn status year: 2021

InMobi, a provider of content, marketing, and monetisation technologies, became the first Indian unicorn after Soft­bank invested $200 million in the firm in 2011. The mobile advertising technology platform allows brands, developers and publishers to engage consumers through contextual mobile advertising. The firm was established in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal. 

Unicorn status year: 2011