Over 25% unicorns in India founded by serial entrepreneurs: Report

Startups raised $25 billion in 2022, or almost 2.2X as much as they did in 2020.

The number of startups IPOs also declined to 4 in 2022 compared to 11 in 2021. (Representative image from IANS)

More than 25 per cent of Unicorns (with valuation $1 billion and above) in India are founded by repeat entrepreneurs who bring with themselves the expertise and the experience to run a business, a report showed on Tuesday.

This expertise is what helped India become the third nation to have 100 unicorns, including the 24 unicorns that emerged in 2022, according to the report by Orios Venture Partners, a leading early-stage venture capital fund.

Prakhar Pandey, Founder and CEO of Moolaah said, "Entrepreneurship is amongst the best self learning courses one can fend for. Always be open to learning and adapting to ever changing situations, which helps you pivot your plans as per customer requirements. This will help one in the longevity of their business."

"Always have people better than you at a particular skill, work with you. Entrepreneurship is not a one person racquet sport but a group team effort to conquer success," he added.

Today, one unicorn out of every 13 globally is being born in India.

"India remains a global hotspot in technology company value creation with 22 unicorns last year. The next phase of the Indian technology story will be graduating these unicorns to exits via IPOs and the coming years should see a flurry of activity in that direction," said Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners.

Startups raised $25 billion in 2022, or almost 2.2X as much as they did in 2020.

However, in 2022, startups also witnessed a 30 per cent decline in funding compared to 2021.

The number of startups IPOs also declined to 4 in 2022 compared to 11 in 2021. The year also saw 229 acquisitions and 4 IPOs.

Despite the funding winter, the technology ecosystem in India saw abundant activity last year.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) dethroned fintech to become the sector with the largest number of unicorns.

Saas had the largest number of unicorns in 2022 (six) ,followed by fintech (four), logistics (three) and edtech (two).

In 2022, it took an average of 8.4 years to turn unicorn, with 42 companies turning unicorns in less than 5 years. Bengaluru remained the largest unicorn hub in India and also emerged as the 7th largest unicorn hub of the world, the report mentioned.

There were 229 acquisitions in 2022 compared to 250 in 2021.

Swiggy was added to the Decacorn list (with a valuation of $10 billion and above) last year, making the count 5 so far.

(IANS Inputs)