Indian Startups that Became Unicorns in 2020

By siliconindia  |  Wednesday, 25 November 2020, 10:36:04 PM IST

Indian Startups that Became Unicorns in 2020

Driving the dreams for Indian economic, societal, and technical/non-technical sectors are the Indian startups.

In recent times, last month in October, Razorpay acquired $100 million from Sequoia and GIC. It became a Unicorn.

Amidst the pandemic, a major number of startups went ahead with their respective business, and raised significant funding to stay competitive, realize new opportunities. With that being said, the Indian Startup Community holds immense potential and quite a number of VCs are intending to invest in a startup for catering the needs to a customer-base of a widely spread market.

No one can deny the fact that the COVID19 pandemic gave birth to the thought of a negative latent economy, during which reaching the Unicorn status for any startup was considered as getting a glimpse of a shooting star near the brightly shining sun.

However, despite all troubles, some of the startups from the fintech sector, software space, edtech segment, and beauty division are now Unicorns. (Unicorns are privately held startups which are valued at $1 billion).

Here is a list of such startups –

Pine Labs –

The merchant commerce solution provider, and point-of-sale, became the first startup to gain Unicorn status in 2020. Following an agreement with the financial services major Mastercard in January, Pine Labs, which contributes to 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities, where there are 450,000 merchant touchpoints, gained Unicorn status.

FirstCry –

FirstCry was founded in 2010, by Supam Maheshwari, an Amitava Saha. FirstCry offers different baby and kids products from different categories, including stationery and clothing. It claims that it has served 2 lakh babies and kids with products across 2,000 brands. The company’s user base expanded to 4 plus million and it has a retail footprint of more than 300 stores located around 125 cities.

In the month of February, FirstCry entered the Unicorn Club after securing an investment of $300 million investment from SoftBank. With that being confirmed, SoftBank is now yet to invest $100 million (~Rs 703.71 crore) on the second anniversary of the agreement in January 2021.

Nykaa –

Nykaa, a fashion e-tailer was started by Falguni Nayar in 2012. It evaluated $1.2 billion on April 2020, after securing 100 crore in funding from the previous investor UK-based Steadview Capital as a primary investment in the same month. Based in Mumbai, the cosmetic retailer had scaled down the operations during the coronavirus lockdown.

Postman –

Headquartered in San Francisco, Postman was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, and Abhijit Kane. Postman, a leading platform for application programming interface (API) development, secured $150 million in a Series C investment round. In the month of June, the investment round was led by Insight Partners, Global Venture Capital, and a private equity firm. Postman has 500,000 companies as users in worldwide locations, which helps the companies in pacifying their software development effectively.

Zerodha –

Zerodha, currently evaluated at $3 billion is the newborn in the list of 100 richest 2020 by Forbes. Zerodha’s founders – Nithin and Nikhil Kamath invested 3.5 crore in a trading platform named GoldenPi in June.

Unacademy –

Unacademy in October raised ~ 1,125 crore in a funding round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 where Facebook, a former investor also participated. Previously, in the month of February, Unacademy raised ~ 780 crore in a funding led by Facebook and General Atlantic. Unacademy’s network of 18,000 educators and 350,000 paid subscribers notify about its success.

Razorpay –

Razor pay raised $100 million (~Rs 731 crore) in a funding round co-led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and Sequoia Capital India. Razorpay augments businesses in modernizing their financial infrastructure through intelligent automated payment. Furthermore, it provides banking solutions for managing the respective businesses' overall cash-flow. It is the latest Unicorn in the list, which presently powers payments to 5 plus million businesses, including Airtel, BookMyShow, Facebook, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, and ICICI Prudential.

 

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