India’s Unicorn Landscape: The Journey of Founders
India's startup ecosystem has emerged as a global leader, producing over 100 unicorns
India's startup ecosystem has emerged as a global leader, producing over 100 unicorns.According to an analysis by PrivateCircle Research, about 60% of unicorn founders in India are first-time founders.
However, there are interesting trends that emerge among the rest 40% Indian unicorn founders, who are serial entrepreneurs.
Out of the 261 unicorn founders analysed in this report, 29% founders took two attempts to build their first unicorn and another 6% took three tries.
Founders in this space can be grouped into three categories based on how many attempts it took to build a billion-dollar company:
1. First-Time Founders (60%)
Freshworks: Founded by Girish Mathrubootham, this SaaS company went public in 2021.
Zerodha: Nithin Kamath revolutionized stock trading in India on his first attempt.
Razorpay: Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar launched this payments platform as their first venture.
2. Second-Time Founders (29%)
Zepto: Founders originally built KiranaKart before launching the quick-commerce unicorn.
CRED: Kunal Shah sold Freecharge before founding the $6.4B fintech unicorn CRED.
@Dealshare: Vineet Rao founded @SpectraVR and Shopwest before his success with Dealshare.
3. Third-Time (or More) Founders (6%)
Paytm: Vijay Shekhar Sharma had multiple ventures before building Paytm, a leader in India's fintech space.
Ola Electric: Bhavish Aggarwal, after co-founding @Ola , launched Ola Electric, another billion-dollar company.
Zomato: Deepinder Goyal had prior ventures before turning Zomato into a food delivery giant.
Xpressbees: Amit Gupta co-founded Xpressbees, a logistics unicorn, after his previous success with @Droom, an automotive marketplace.
Unicorns Built Faster the Second Time:
Notably, second ventures by serial founders often achieve unicorn status in a median time of 1.5 years. Examples include companies like Ola Electric, @Xpressbees, Krutrim, @Glance, GlobalBees, and Oxyzo Financial Services.
Embracing Failure:
The journey to unicorn status is often marked by resilience and learning from failures. The Indian startup ecosystem is increasingly embracing the idea that setbacks can lead to greater insights and success. Investors and venture capitalists now often prefer founders with prior failures, viewing these experiences as indicators of grit, adaptability, and the ability to pivot when necessary. As the ecosystem matures, we can expect more serial entrepreneurs to emerge, armed with lessons learned from their previous ventures, thus enhancing India's position in the global #startup landscape.
#startups #venturecapital #ai #future
Links to the reasearch
https://blog.privatecircle.co/years-to-become-unicorn/