The next time you hear someone tell you that unicorns are not real, show them this article. We have reached the halfway point of the year 2023, and it is already raining unicorns in India. This year, till now, we have seen 17 new unicorn startups in India.
Unicorn startups have a valuation of $1 billion or more. To date, including the 17 new unicorn startups this year, India has 103 unicorn startups, or as you may say, 103 members of the unicorn club.
India has become a startup hub as we see budding entrepreneurs trying to realize their dreams of owning a successful startup daily. Let’s look at a few of the recent unicorn startups in India.
Fractal
Fractal is an AI and advanced analytics solutions startup. It was established in 2000 by a team of five, Srikanth Velamakanni, Pranay Agrawal, Nirmal Palaparthi, Pradeep Suryanarayan, and Ramakrishna Reddy. Fractal was the first inductee into the unicorn club in 2022. It raised $360 million in its private equity round from TPG Capital Asia and secondary share purchase from funds advised by Apax Partners.
Darwinbox
Darwinbox is a cloud-based HRtech startup headquartered in Hyderabad, which was established in 2015 by Jayant Patel, Rohit Chennamaneni, and Chaitanya Peddi. It enables companies to automate their entire employee lifecycle using one HR platform. It caters to all the HR needs such as onboarding, recruiting, leaves, attendance, directory, travel and people analytics, payroll, etc.
Darwinbox became the third inductee of the unicorn club in 2022 by raising $72 million in a funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) in January. Already existing investors such as Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Salesforce Ventures, Endiya Partners, JGDEV, 3one4capital and SCB 10X also participated in this round.
Xpressbees
Xpressbees was founded in 2015 after being spun off by the e-commerce giant, FirstCry. Xpressbees is an e-commerce logistics startup that offers express delivery services.
It is well established in over 3,000 cities and serves around 20,000 pin codes all over India.
In its recent Series F funding round led by private equity funds Blackstone Growth, ChrysCapital, and TPG Growth, it raised $300 million. Existing investors, Norwest Venture Partners and Investcorp, also participated in this round.
You can also check this out The State of Global Startup Ecosystems in 2022
Hasura
Hasura was established in 2018 by Tanmai Gopal and Rajoshi Ghosh. It is a startup that provides data access and data flow tools and services through GraphQL APIs, a solution to accelerate product and data delivery.
It was the 9th inductee to the unicorn club in 2022 after raising $100 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Vertex Ventures, Greenoaks Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners in its Series C round in February.
Open
Open was founded in 2017 by Anish Achuthan, Ajeesh Achuthanm Deena Jacob, and Mabel Chacko in Bengaluru. It is a neo-banking startup offering business banking, payments, and expense management services to SMBs across India.
Open was the 100th inductee in the unicorn club when it entered the prestigious club in 2022. It raised $50 million from IIFL, and the same round saw participation from existing investors, Temasek, Tiger Global, and 3one4 Capital.
So, the next time you have to prove unicorns are real, there is no need to open a fantasy storybook.
