Over 25% of unicorns in India have been set up by repeat founders: Report

About 25.2 per cent of unicorns in India have been founded by entrepreneurs who have already set up  businesses before, according to a report by venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners. These founders bring with them the expertise and experience of running a business.

“Such successful Unicorn founders can also be called serial entrepreneurs,” said the ‘Indian Unicorns and Exits Tech Report 2022’ by Orios. “This expertise is what helped India become the third nation to have 100 unicorns, including the 24 that emerged in 2022. Today, one unicorn out of every thirteen is born in India.”

The report said that startups raised $25 billion in 2022, or almost 2.2x as much as they did in 2020. However, in 2022, startups also saw a 30 per cent decline in funding compared to 2021. The number of startup IPOs also declined to four in 2022, from 11 in 2021. The year also saw 229 acquisitions and four IPOs.

Despite the “funding winter”, the technology ecosystem in India saw abundant activity in 2022. SaaS dethroned Fintech to become the sector with the largest number of unicorns. This report also highlights the number of years it took on average for a company to turn into a unicorn. In 2022, it took an average of 8.4 years for them to become unicorns, with 42 companies turning unicorns in less than 5 years. Bengaluru remained the largest unicorn hub in India and also emerged as the world's seventh largest unicorn hub.

“India remains a global hotspot in technology company value creation with 22 unicorns last year. This speaks for the deep adoption of tech across the country,” said Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners. “The next phase of the Indian technology story will be graduating these unicorns to exits via IPOs and the coming years should see a flurry of activity in that direction.”

Key highlights of the report:

• Saas had the largest number of Unicorns in 2022 (six), followed by Fintech (4), Logistics (3) and Edtech (2).
• There were 229 acquisitions in 2022, compared with 250 in 2021.
• MX Taka Tak, acquired by Moj was the largest deal, followed by Blinkit, whichwas  acquired by Zomato.
• 80% of Indian unicorns are founded by engineers.
• 75% are founded by first-time founders.
• Swiggy was added to the Decacorn list in 2022, taking the count to 5 so far.
• 5ire became the fastest company to turn unicorn in 2022, reaching unicorn status in just 11 months.
• Mobio became the slowest Unicorn last year taking 22 years to achieve the status.