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Unicorn Companies
Ola Group, spanning ride-hailing, electric vehicles, and AI, now holds over 50 per cent of all patents filed by India's 117 unicorns. India's unicorns collectively hold only 229 patents, with Ola Group owning more than half, according to data from the Indian Patent Advanced Search (IPAS) System. In a recent post on X (formerly Twitter), Ola Founder Bhavish Aggarwal shared, "Happy that Ola group @OlaElectric @Olacabs and @Krutrim have half of all granted patents for all Indian unicorns put together. Not happy with our number of 650 applied patents though. We will accelerate much much more in coming years!" Sources close to Ola confirmed that the group has filed over 650 patent applications, with 180 already granted. This includes filings by Ola Electric, Ola Consumer, and Krutrim, with Ola Electric accounting for the lion's share of about 70-80 per cent of the total. The report reveals that 101 of India's unicorns have filed zero patents, spotlighting a heavy tilt in the startup ...
Wipro Executive chairman Rishad Premji on Thursday said that the whole focus on "unicornism" in the country is "overhyped" and being celebrated too much. "You want to focus on building businesses that sustain and then ultimately value will come. You cannot start your journey saying I want to (have) a value of X, Y and Z. That is very turning off. And so, I think it is the first red sign that pops up," he said when asked about the growing trend of startups looking to achieve Unicorn status within a few months of coming into being. Stating that people talk about valuation as opposed to building valuable businesses, he said, "We have overhyped in our country this whole focus on unicornism and we celebrate that too much. There are thousands of other companies that don't make it, but serve a need and are successful, but they don't make unicorn valuation and it doesn't make them non-successful companies, he said. A CII report, in collaboration with McKinsey & Co earlier this year said ..
The term unicorn has emerged from the US, suited more to the American context, and India needs to celebrate 'Indicorns' with its own benchmarks of success and business goals tailored to the Indian context, Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl said on Tuesday. Drawing attention to the rampant usage of the term 'unicorn' in the Indian venture capital industry, he said the world and India have been celebrating unicorns for many years now, but it's important to ask why this concept exists in the first place. The term "unicorn" was created by a venture capitalist in the US to describe companies valued at over USD 1 billion -- "a mythical figure", the entrepreneur-turned-investor said. "India's income levels have gone up. We are seeing companies become profitable in 2-3 years from the starting point. Then why is there an obsession with a currency that is not ours? An amount which is irrelevant in our context, like why Rs 8,300 crore (USD 1 billion)?" he said. Rather, it is better to build ...