Unicorns as solution provider: From fintech and pharma to green energy

As the world was returning to a normal lifestyle, after the first wave of the pandemic, the ferocious second wave of Covid-19 has brought us back to the uncertain days. Unfortunately, the muted virus has infected and engulfed the nation with the highest number of cases. But the protocols of lockdown and advanced vaccination drive are supporting to fight effectively. To get ahead of this difficult period, people will be expected to appear more cautious, resilient and extra prepared for the upcoming challenges.

In this obscurity, our economy was a glimmer of hope. This was due to the accomplishment of entrepreneurship with newly tagged unicorns. Zeta, a banking tech startup, has turned out to be the latest unicorn in India, already taking the 2021 tally to 13. It enhances the cost-to-income ratio and user experience for financial institutions as well as leverages a cloud-native platform. A report on Indian unicorns by Credit Suisse, released in March 2021, has said that “due to remarkable confluence of changes in the funding, regulatory and business environment there has been an acceleration of 100 unicorns in India with a combined market capitalization of $240 billion.” At present, India has become the third-largest number of unicorns internationally.

The adaption of technology made the transformation feasible. As a result of the IndiaStack and the Aadhar identification system, India has transformed digital identities.  With the connection of Aadhar, bank accounts and mobile phones (JAM trinity), India has pushed the envelope of financial inclusion and reduced system leakages. The immediate advantage moves that JAM has empowered, has become a system for the conveyance of public merchandise. Accessibility of digital banking through UPI has witnessed huge development over a short period. Also, our responsibility for environmental change at COP 21 has prompted interruption in sustainable power with India accomplishing a record low cost of Rs 1.99 per kWh. Therefore, teledensity, rich data for minimal-expense smartphones, and speeding up our improvement progress to diminish outflows have driven the fintech, edutech, logistics and renewable energy revolution.

In this context, a critical segment in the unicorn space is the development of healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotech firms as worldwide forces to be reckoned with. Former year, the National Digital Health Mission and Telemedicine Guidelines, were convenient involvements for this sector. Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India have become easily recognized names in India with their life-saving intercessions of Covaxin and Covishield. Hetero Labs has acquired noticeable quality as a main generic pharmaceutical company and the “world’s largest producer of anti-retroviral drugs”. It has 36 manufacturing facilities, with more than 300 products in over 127 countries. For the treatment of Covid-19: it has initiated Covifor, the generic Remdesivir, is fabricating investigational oral therapeutic antiviral drug Molnupiravir, and is currently delivering 100 million vaccine doses of Sputnik V vaccine yearly. At long last, PharmEasy is functioning as an online healthcare aggregator that gives medication conveyance and diagnostic tests, advancing healthcare accessibility and reasonableness. It promises to deliver across 22,000 pin-codes, service more than 2 million families consistently.

Fintech and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) took off with intercessions like Digital India, India Stack, JAM trinity, UPI and record low data costs at a minimal expense of $0.68 per gigabyte of data well lesser than the worldwide average of $4.21. While the migration to cloud endures, the worth of easy data management, protection and usage has exponentially climbed. Druva gives data protection solutions for managing venture data. It exhibits advanced data management techniques, offers data analytics intelligence, and policy-based data management services. Its customer base boasts of over 4,000 companies, has lately outperformed 7 million everyday backups, as it astonishingly investigates 2.5 billion backups yearly while managing 169PB of data.

A fintech SaaS company, HighRadius influences AI-powered autonomous systems to support automate Accounts Receivable and Treasury processes. It develops transaction competence by automating receivables and payments processes, managing over 2.23 trillion transactions yearly and is operated by over 200 Global-2000 firms and mid-size ventures. Innovaccer, gathers medical care data across different systems for delivering unified patient records and actionable insights, ensuring beneficial patient results. Effective in the USA and India, it has included 24 million patients and 50 medical services associations.

Logistics cost includes nearly 14% of GDP in India equated to 8-10% of GDP in the US and Europe. The upcoming need to decrease the cost for raising economic competitiveness has been stressed through policy interventions. This includes rationalization of tax structure by the use of GST leading to faster movement of goods across the country, accelerated speed of highway construction at an average speed of 29.81km each day and the 102-lakh crore National Infrastructure Pipeline Project, among different interferences. It seems like a golden opportunity for entrepreneurs to set up agile networks, disruptive technologies, end-to-end visibility, risk mitigation and management techniques.

Ecom Express, an end-to-end technology-enabled logistics solutions, runs the service for the e-commerce industry. It has digitized processes by an out-and-out GPS-enabled fleet of vehicles and a restrictive venture stage while offering 2,932 facility centres located across 27,000 pin codes. Udaan has advanced a network-centric B2B trade platform, invented for small and medium businesses. It is actively providing services to 30 lakh retailers, 25,000 sellers across 900 cities by uniting traders, wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers, onto a solitary platform with over 5 lakh products.

The determined viewpoint of our Intended Nationally Determined Contributions at Paris Agreement, co-founding of the International Solar Alliance, a visionary mark of 450GW of renewable power by 2030 and latest PLI schemes concentrated on Advanced Chemistry Cell Battery Storage and High-Efficiency Solar PV Modules have taken focus to the consequence of dealing with Climate Change. Nowadays, the existence of a competitive and technological opportunity to transition regarding sustainable energy usage is supporting the idea. Such as, Greenko is substituting fossil fuels with cohesive decarbonized energy and grid assets empowering affordable and sustainable energy. It is based on “digitization, decarbonization and decentralization” with a portfolio across wind, solar and hydro technologies. Its integrated report of 2019-20 remarkably lists cumulative energy assets of 6.2GW, via 112 projects, with 2,300km in transmission lines across 15 states in India. Another, Myrtah Energy is concentrated on scaling wind and solar energy for India. It has erected 1800MW of operational assets across 17 wind farms and 21 ground-monitored solar farms in 9 states. Last but not least, ReNew Power is functioning over 100 utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, producing power for commercial and industrial customers with a renewable advantage base of nearly 10GW, spread across 8 states in India.

The entrepreneurs have considered the evolving sectors and set to be exemplary catalysers for economic growth. It is supplementing quality of life and raising ease of living. Amid the difficult times, the blooming of these unicorns brings hope and optimism. Proceeding forward, we must attempt to move into the sunrise segments of development – genomics, AI, clean and connected mobility, green hydrogen and advanced cell chemistry. These segments also consist of big opportunity and we must practice technology to jump ahead.  The dominant pandemic bestows us with unique opportunities to accelerate their adoption.

For the first time that Indian entrepreneurship has brought such a captivating revolution focussed on solving our socio-economic challenges, as a result of innovative ideas and technologies. Entrepreneurs stand tall today, tackling for a greener, effective and stronger India.

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