According to The Hurun Research Institute’s Global Unicorn Index 2023, with 68 companies in the billion-dollar valuation club, India is the third-largest center for startup unicorns.
With a $22 billion valuation, the edtech behemoth BYJU’S topped the list for India, marking the tenth largest increase in valuations since before the pandemic. It was succeeded by the $8 billion fantasy sports platform Dream11 and the food delivery and rapid commerce firm Swiggy.
Delhivery, a logistics unicorn, placed 14th on the list of top initial public offerings (IPOs) of the previous year, despite the fact that none of the Indian firms were listed among the top 10 worldwide.
The total number of unicorns formed by Indians worldwide is now 138, with an additional 70 unicorns founded by Indian co-founders outside of India. With 64 unicorns born outside of India, the US accounted for the most, followed by the UK with two and Germany, Singapore, Indonesia, and Mexico with one apiece.
More offshore unicorns are being created by Russian, Chinese, and Indian founders than by those from any other nation. Chinese co-founded 32 unicorns outside of China, compared to 316 in China, while Indians co-founded 70 unicorns outside of India, according to the survey.
As per the research, the number of unicorns worldwide has increased by 303 from the previous year to 1,361. With 666 unicorns, the US tops the world (up 179 from last year), accounting for 49% of all unicorns worldwide. China follows in second with 316 unicorns.
With an average of one new unicorn per day, the time since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic has seen the fastest unicorn creation rate in history.
According to the research, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, a generative AI tool, is among the world’s top-performing unicorns, having risen from 272nd to 17th place and increasing its valuation from $17 billion to $20 billion.
The note-taking software Notion Labs, situated in San Francisco, has had a considerable increase in valuation since last year; Shein, based in Guangzhou, and SpaceX, based in Los Angeles, have seen increases of $45 billion and $37 billion, respectively.
But the firms with the largest declines in valuation were fintech Klarna, Stripe, and Bytedance, which saw a $150 billion decline.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of countries with at least one unicorn has increased from 24 to 48, with Canada adding 23 new unicorns.
According to the survey, there are already 271 cities with unicorns, up from 118 three years ago. With 181 unicorns, San Francisco continued to hold the title of unicorn capital of the globe, ahead of Beijing, Shanghai, New York, and Beijing. Bengaluru is tied with the Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen on the list with 33 unicorns.
The last year saw the creation of the greatest number of unicorns in the finance, enterprise services, blockchain, and logistics industries. Since COVID-19, fintech has surpassed ecommerce as the leading industry that produces unicorns.
The industries most affected by unicorn disruptions in the last year were aerospace, energy, and life sciences.
