Iron Pillar has pegged India to have more than 250 unicorns by 2025. This prediction comes from proprietary data analysis of venture growth investor Iron Pillar in its Tech Unicorns Market Landscape Report IV.
Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner of Iron Pillar, said, “The total number of unicorns from India more than doubled from 62 to 130 in the last 15 months. While we believe that this pace may reduce a bit in the next 24 months, creating 250 companies with over $1 billion in value by 2025 is an extremely activable goal for Indian founders. We are especially bullish because about 50 per cent of these scaled companies are building for markets beyond India as well.”
Start-up ecosystem
Iron Pillar report noted that more companies are expected to expand outside India in the coming years with initial focus on the West and Southeast Asia. Further, start-ups are said to reach unicorn status faster now. 65 of 130 companies achieved unicorn status within 5 years from first capital raise, the report added.
Unicorns built from India include 58 global cloud companies, 59 B2C companies and 13 B2B companies. An increasing number of Indian tech founders building for global markets from India are choosing to base their headquarters in the US. Companies building cloud products from India are said to be extremely capital efficient, reaching the unicorn status with 42 per cent less capital compared to B2C companies. They also outperform on value created per unit of capital raised and number of exits. Average number of fund raise rounds by global cloud unicorns are less than B2C and B2B unicorns.
According to a CB Insights March 2022 report on share of unicorns, India emerged as the third-largest tech market in the world after the US and China. Indian tech start-ups notched $42 billion funding in 2021 alone.