2021 seems to be the year of unicorns in the country. India currently has 69 unicorns, with 32 new ones added this year alone, and this list excludes companies that have been acquired or have gone public.

Across the world too, 2021 has been a good year for unicorns – 374 new entities from different countries have been added to the unicorn list, up until September 30, bringing the total to a whopping 848.

For the uninitiated, a unicorn is a private company that is valued at $1 billion or more.

Now, there are more than 3, 600 investors who have been backing the 800+ unicorns across the world. While a majority (more than 60 per cent) of them have invested in only one unicorn, others have chosen to back more. That being the case, who are the top unicorn investors globally, and more importantly who are the investors that have backed the highest number of unicorns in India?

India leaders

According to our analysis based on data from Tracxn, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital lead the charts with investments in 27 Indian unicorns each in their kitty. Their unicorn portfolio includes firms such as PharmEasy, Razorpay, Vedantu and Grofers.

Softbank comes next with 23 Indian unicorns, followed by Accel and Innoven Capital with 16 unicorns each, Falcon Edge Capital with 14, Steadview Capital with 13, and Temasek, Trifecta Capital with 12 unicorns each.

Global leaders

A closer look at the global scenario reveals that Tiger Global Management also tops the list of top 10 unicorn investors globally, with investments in 125 unicorns. Its unicorn portfolio includes firms such as Stripe, ByteDance, BYJU's, Instacart and Databricks, data from CB Insights recent report ‘Unicorn Investors: Who’s Backed The Most Billion Dollar Companies — And Who Got In Early’ showed.

Softbank Group stands second in the global list with investments in 77 unicorns, followed by Coatue Management with 61, Tencent Holdings with 60 and Sequoia Capital China with 58 unicorns. The others in the list include Accel with 57 unicorns in its portfolio, Sequoia Capital with 54, Andreessen Horowitz with 52, DST Global with 48, Insight Partners and Fidelity Investments with 45 unicorns each, as per the CB Insights report.

Geographic trends

Of these top unicorn investors, globally, seven are headquartered in the US (Tiger Global Management, Coatue Management, Accel, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, Fidelity Investments) and it is interesting to note that all of these seven have more than 50 per cent of the unicorns in their portfolios located in the US.

For instance, 66 per cent of Tiger Global's unicorns are based out of the US, 7 per cent are located in China and the remaining 26 per cent are from other geographic locations. Similarly, Coatue Management has 57 per cent of its unicorns, Accel — 60 per cent, Sequoia Capital —76 per cent Andreessen Horowitz — 90 per cent, Insight Partners —64 per cent and Fidelity Investments — 78 per cent of their unicorns located in the US.

On the other hand, China-headquartered Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital China have 60 per cent and 79 per cent of their unicorns located in China. DST Global and SoftBank Group, which are based out of Hong Kong and Japan, however, have a greater share of their unicorns located in geographies outside the US and China.

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