Indians founded 109 unicorns outside India, 67 within the country: Report

Food delivery platform Swiggy is India’s most valued unicorn. Source: Swiggy

Indians have founded 109 ‘unicorn’ companies outside of India and 67 within the country, according to the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2024.

The report says that while India remains the third-biggest hub of unicorn companies in the world, the number of such companies in the country has declined for the first time in four years. A company is a unicorn when its valuation is more than $1 billion.

The decline has been recorded as ed-tech company Byju’s has been taken off the list. Grappling with alleged corporate governance issues and complaints of regulatory impropriety, the valuation of the company has fallen from over $22 billion to less than $1 billion over the past one year.

As for the overall drop in the number of Indian companies among the world’s unicorns, Hurun India’s chief researcher Anas Rahman Junaid was quoted as saying by PTI that it was due to lack of investments into startups despite handsome gains on the equity indices. He also pointed out the tendency of founders to start companies outside India, which dented the prospects of India in the unicorn club.

Such a trend led to the addition of 24 unicorns to take the overall number of companies valued at over $1 billion to 340 during the year 2023-24, according to the report.

Swiggy, Dream11 most valued Indian unicorns

Food delivery platform Swiggy and fantasy sports company Dream11 are the most valued Indian unicorns with valuations of around $8 billion each, according to the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2024. The two companies hold the 83rd rank among the world’s 1,453 unicorns.

The two companies are followed by payments solutions provider Razorpay which is valued at around $7.5 billion. It holds 94th position in the world.

Among the additions over the past years was also the artificial intelligence (AI) platform Krutrum.

Rahman said that the past year saw 60 AI-focused startups from the United States and 37 from China become unicorns.

Overall, the unicorn list was led by TikTok-owner ByteDance with the valuation of $220 billion, followed by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX at $180 billion and Microsoft-backed OpenAI at $100 billion, according to the report.

Byju’s registered biggest drop in valuation in world

The crisis-ridden ed-tech company Byju’s registered the biggest drop in valuation in the world, as per the report.

While the company was valued at around $22 billion a year ago, it is now valued at under $1 billion. It has lost the unicorn status.

As Byju’s restructured its operations and cut costs after increasing losses, it “missed its revenue target for the financial year ending in March last year and is working to resolve a USD 1.2 billion debt”, according to the report.

As for the Byju’s, Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher, was quoted as saying that some startups indeed fail and receive massive media attention in the process but added that such companies are vital to an economy.