Top 20 Indian Startups that are changing the world – Learn Immense
Top 20 Indian Startups that are changing the world
The term startup refers to a company in the initial stages of operations and business. Startups are founded by one or more entrepreneurs who want to develop a product or service for which they believe there is demand. Startups come with high risk as failure is very possible but they can also be very unique places to work with great benefits and a focus on innovation. These companies generally start with high costs and limited revenue, which is why they look for capital from a variety of sources such as venture capitalists.
In terms of startups and business, India has evolved into one of the top emerging countries in the world. Hundreds of startup companies have been founded there in the last years, many of which are enjoying incredible success.
We have compiled a list of the 20 most successful ones who got a valuation of B$.
- BYJU’s
- Swiggy
- OYO rooms
- Dream11
- Razorpay
- Ola cabs
- Of Business
- Meesho
- CRED
- ShareChat
- Digit Insurance
- Unacademy
- Upstox
- Cars24
- Eruditus Executive Education
- Udaan
- DailyHunt
- Groww
- Delhivery
- Pinelabs
BYJU’s
BYJU’S is the world’s leading edtech company that offers highly adaptive, engaging, and effective learning programs for students across K-12, competitive exams, coding, and upskilling courses for professionals. With over 150 million registered learners globally, 7.5 million annual paid subscriptions, and a presence in 120 countries, BYJU’S has been at the forefront of creating tech-driven and immersive learning experiences for students around the world.
BYJU’S Future School offers coding, maths, and music programs to students in the USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico. Taking its vision of building a community of active learners globally, BYJU’S has onboarded strong partners through strategic acquisitions of Osmo, EPiC, Tynker, White Hat Jr, Aakash, Great Learning, Gradeup, and GeoGebra.
A digital-first company, BYJU’S has been backed by prominent investors like Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Naspers, CPPIB, General Atlantic, Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Verlinvest, IFC, Aarin Capital, TimesInternet, Lightspeed Ventures, Tiger Global, Owl Ventures & Qatar Investment Authority and got a total valuation of $21 Billion.
Swiggy
Swiggy is an Indian online food ordering and delivery platform. Founded in July 2014, Swiggy is based in Banglore, and operates in 500 Indian cities, as of September 2021. Apart from food delivery, Swiggy also provides on-demand grocery deliveries under the name Instamart and an instant package delivery service called “Swiggy Genie”.Swiggy is operated by Bundl Technologies Private Limited.
Swiggy also acquired Bangalore-based AI startup Kint.io, Asian food startup 48East, milk delivery startup SuprDaily, and ready-to-eat brand Fingerlix. Swiggy got investment by investors like Accel, SAIF Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Bessemer VenturePartners, Harmony Partners, Naspers, Meitanuan-Dianping, Falcon Edge Capital, Goldman Sachs, Think Capital, Amansa Capital, and Carmignacand got a valuation of $10.9 Billion.
OYO Rooms
OYO Rooms (stylized as OYO), also known as OYO Hotels & Homes, is an Indian multinational hospitality chain of leased and franchised hotels, homes, and living spaces. Founded in 2012 by Ritesh Agarwal, OYO initially consisted mainly of budget hotels. As of January 2020, it has more than 43,000 properties and 1 million rooms across 800 cities in 80 countries, including India, Malaysia, UAE, Nepal, China, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Philippines, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the United States.
The company’s investors include Softbank Group, Didi Chuxing, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Hero Enterprise, Airbnb, and China Lodging Group. more than 500 current and former employees of OYO, purchased around 3 crore shares in the company. The total value of these shares can be approximated to about ₹330crores ($43 million), as per the last valuation of OYO of $9.6 billion.
Dream11
Dream11 is an Indian fantasy sports platform that allows users to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, and basketball. In April 2019, Dream11 became the first Indian gaming company to become a unicorn. Dream11 was co-founded by Harsh Jain & Bhavit Sheth in 2008.
In 2012, they introduced freemium fantasy sports in India for cricket fans. In 2014, the company reported 1 million registered users, which grew to 2 million in 2016 and 45 million in 2018.
In 2019, Steadview Capital completed a secondary investment in Dream11. Apart from Steadview, Dream11’s investors included Kalaari Capital, Think Investments, Multiples Equity, and Tencent,And got a total valuation of $8 billion.
On 18 August 2020, Dream11 won the title sponsorship rights for the IPL2020 for ₹222 crores ($29.96 million), after Vivo pulled out for the season.
Razorpay
Razorpay is an India-based, fintech company that provides payment gateway services to vendors, merchants, and eCommerce platforms. It is an online system that is designed to handle end-to-end payments that can also be integrated with different websites and apps. The company was founded by IIT Roorkee alumni Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur in 2014.
Razorpay acquired ThirdWatch in 2019, an AI-powered company, Opfin (RazorpayX) in 2019, a payroll management firm, TERA Finlabs in 2021, an AI-based risk tech SaaS(software as a service) platform.
In 2015, Razorpay got an investment from Y Combinator mentors and investors, Tiger Global Management and Matrix Partners India. Then in 2016 from MasterCard and in 2019 from Sequoia Capital. In 2020 got funding from GIC (Singaporean sovereign wealth fund) and became a unicorn. Razorpay completed another funding round and raised $160 million, in April 2021, which was co-led by Sequoia Capital India and GIC. And reached a valuation of $7.5 billion.
OLA Cabs
Ola is India’s largest mobility platform and one of the world’s largest ride-hailing companies, serving 250+ cities across India, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. The Ola app offers mobility solutions by connecting customers to drivers and a wide range of vehicles across bikes, auto-rickshaws, metered taxis, and cabs, enabling convenience and transparency for hundreds of millions of consumers and over 1.5 million driver-partners. Ola was founded in Dec 2010 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati with a mission to build mobility for a billion people.
Ola has acquired 8 organizations in total. In 2015 TaxiForSure and Geotagg, in 2016 Qarth, in 2017 Foodpanda India, in 2018 Ridlr, in 2019 Pikup.ai, in 2021 GeoSpoc, and now in Mar2022 acquired Avail Finance.
Ola has reached a valuation of $7.5 billion now and got funding from matrix Partners, Tiger Global Management, Steadview Capital, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank Group, DST Global, GIC, Falcon Edge Capital, Baillie Gifford, RNT Capital Advisors, Temasek Holdings, Tencent Holdings, Hyundai Motor Co.& Kia Motors Corp.
OfBusiness
OfBusiness is a tech-enabled platform that facilitates raw material procurement and credit for SMEs with a focus on the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors. It integrates technology into SMEs’ buying behavior to make available better products, at better prices, in better timelines to customers with comprehensive online and offline support. Key raw materials include metals, chemicals, polymers, Agri commodities, petrochemicals, and building materials.
OfBusiness provides SMEs access to cash flow-based financing for buying raw materials through its NBFC ‘Oxyzo Financial Services’. The Company also offers a host of tech services for SMEs including BidAssist for new growth opportunities.
In 2021 OfBusiness reached a valuation of $5 billion. As a startup, it has got funding from Zodious Capital, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Norwest Venture Partners, Alpha Wave Global, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Tiger Global Management.
Meesho
Meesho operates as an online reselling platform that enables anyone to start a business without investment. Meesho is a business platform trusted by more than 2.6 million resellers across India. The company was founded in 2015 by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal and is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka.
Meesho has already got funding from Elevation Capital, Sequoia Capital India, DST Partners, RPS Ventures, Shunwei Capital, Proses & Naspers, SoftBank Vision Fund, B Capital Group, Fidelity Management, and Research Company. Meesho is looking forward to an IPO in early 2023. Till Mar2022, Meesho got a valuation of $5 billion.
CRED
Cred is an Indian fintech company, based in Bangalore, founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah. Cred app’s main feature is reward-based credit card payments. the company had onboarded over 5.9 million users and processed about 20% of all credit card bill payments in India. As of April 2021, Cred offered five distinct products – Cred RentPay, Cred Cash, Cred Pay, Cred Store, and Cred Travel Store. However, from August 20, 2021 Cred also launched a Peer to Peer(P2P) lending feature known as Cred Mint.
Cred is funded by Gemini Investments, Ribbit Capital and Sequoia Capital India, DST Global, Coatue, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global Management, and GIC and reached a valuation of $6.5 billion on Apr2022.
ShareChat is an Indian social media and social networking service, developed by Bangalore-based Mohalla Tech Pvt Ltd. It was founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh, and Farid Ahsan, and incorporated on 8 January 2015.ShareChat has over 250 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages.
The company’s application offers features that include private messaging, tagging, and a personal messaging feature, enabling users to share videos, jokes, songs, and other language-based social content with other unknown users.
It has also acquired MX Takata from times internet group and they’re a lot of small platforms also. This has got funding from Shunwei Capital, Twitter, Tiger Global Management, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures, Mirae-Naver Asia Growth Fund, Alkon Capital, Temasek, Moore Strategic Ventures, and Tencent Capital. And now standing at a valuation of $3.7 billion.
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Digit Insurance
Digit Insurance is an Indian insurance start-up led by a former Allianz chief executive created to make insurance a simpler and faster experience for customers. The company was founded in 2016 by Mr. Kamesh Goyal and received regulatory approval from the Indian government’s Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) in September 2017.
Digit Insurance received an amount of $49 million as the first round of funding from Fairfax Holdings in 2017. In 2018, they have raised another $45 million to expand their footprint across the country to smaller towns and strengthen their tech platform. Now this company has reached a valuation of $3.5 billion.
Unacademy
Unacademy is an Edtech company established in 2015. The company had its beginnings as a Youtube channel created by Gaurav Munjal and started by Dheeraj Meena. Later on, in 2015, the company was registered in Bengaluru as an education company. The company has entered the Unicorn club in September 2020 after it raised $150 million from Softbank and other existing investors.
Unacademy also acquired a lot of companies like WifiStudy, Kreatryx, CodeChef, mastree, PrepLadder, TapChief, Rheo TV, and Spayed.
The funding raised by Unacademy is from Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital, Facebook, Flipkart, SoftBank Vision Fund, Tiger Global Management, Temasek Holdings and now standing at a valuation of $3.44 billion.
Upstox
Based in Mumbai, Upstox is a fintech company that presents a host of innovative investment options for companies and individual users. Furthermore, Upstox strives to empower the traders and end-users with its all-new zero brokerage model. Upstox is a financial technology firm that provides consumers with unique investing choices.
Upstox has turned unicorn on November 25, 2021, following a funding round led by Tiger Global Management. It has also got funded by Mr. Ratan Tata. It is now the 40th unicorn startup in India in 2021. Upstox has a valuation of $3.40 billion.
Cars24
Cars24 is a next-generation-commerce platform for pre-owned autos (cars and bikes). They provide the best experience for car buyers by offering a wide assortment of certified cars that are home delivered with a click of a button while sellers get the best price of their vehicles in less than 1 hour. With the AI-enabled pricing system that empowers the startup, CARS24 can display the accurate market price as well as the appraisal value of the vehicle.
This platform was funded by KCK Global, DST Global, Alpha Wave Incubation, Moore Strategic Partners, Tencent Holdings, Softbank, and at last Alpha Wave Global. Cars24 now standing as a unicorn at the valuation of $3.3 billion.
Eruditus Executive Education
Eruditus executive education programs are intended for mid-career professionals. The company’s portfolio of customized and open programs are designed and conducted in alliance with global leading business schools in a range of formats, including short workshops spanning a few weeks, online programs, or complete modular sessions, enabling professionals to get access to relevant programs that help them get new knowledge and grow in their careers.
Eruditus has partnered with more than 30 universities to date, including MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Cambridge, INSEAD, Wharton, UC Berkeley, INCAE, IIT, IIM, NUS, and HKUST, launching more than 100 courses and serving students from more than 80 countries in multiple languages, including Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin.
It has a total of 8 investors like Leeds Illuminate, and Proses Ventures. Accel Partners and SoftBank Vision Fund are the most recent investors, And after this, it has a valuation of $3.2 billion.
Udaan
Udaan is designed to connect and help the traders, retailers, and wholesalers for the small and medium businesses of India. The B2B trading platform in India, Udaan’s platform supports a wide variety of categories like electronics, home and kitchen, fruits and vegetables, toys, and more. Udaan is currently operating as a market leader in this segment with a staggering market share of 80%.
Udaan has raised a total amount of $1.5 Billion in funding from Altimeter Capital, Citi Ventures, DST Global, Footpath Ventures, GGV Capital, Hillhouse Capital Group, Tencent Holdings, DST Global, Octahedron Capital, Lightspeed Ventures, Microsoft, M&G Prudential and now at a valuation of $3.1 billion.
Dailyhunt
Dailyhunt (formerly Newshunt) is an Indian content and news aggregator application based in Bangalore that provides local language content in 14 Indian languages from multiple content providers. From the nation’s biggest news source to hyperlocal correspondents, it curates news that you will surely love to watch. Almost 90% of the users use the platform in regional languages. It serves more than 350 million users a month, as per the latest reports.
Dailyhunt has witnessed more than $430 mn in funding over 14+ funding rounds from a range of investors including Qatar Investment, Falcon Edge, Google, Microsoft, ByteDance, Goldman Sachs, and others.
Dailyhunt and Josh’s parent, Verse Innovation raised a relatively large funding round on April 6, 2022, which infused $805 mn into the company, led by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), where CPP alone put $425 mn worth of funds at a valuation of $3.1 billion.
Groww
Groww is an investment platform that offers a new way of investing money with stockbroking and direct mutual funds. The user interfaces make investing easy, accessible, transparent, and paperless, enabling users to invest in mutual funds without any hassles. Simply an organization that has made investing simple for millions of Indians.
Groww also acquired the Indiabulls AMC, a mutual fund company. Also got funded bySequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, Tiger Global Management, and Iconiq Growth at a valuation of $3 billion.
Delhivery
Delhivery is an Indian logistics and supply chain company, based in Gurgaon. It was founded in 2011 by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan, and Kapil Bharati. The company has over 85 fulfillment centers, 24 automated sort centers, 70 hubs, 7,500+ partner centers, and 3,000+ direct delivery centers, as of 2021. Delhivery is currently one of the leading players in the logistics space in the country. It offers a full suite of services such as last-mile delivery, third-party and transit warehousing, reverse logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-warehouse, vendor-to-customer shipping, and more.
The company has already been funded by SoftBank Vision Fund, Carlyle Group, Fosun International, CPP board, Fidelity Investments, FedEx Express, Lee Fixel’s Addition LLC, Tiger Global, Bay Capital, Steadview, Amansa, GIC, etc., and is now at a valuation of $3 billion.
Pinelabs
Pine Labs is an Indian merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology, founded in 1998. It is one of the unicorn companies. It provides a merchant platform and makes software for point of sale (PoS) machines. The company has more than 70,000 retailers across India, including major retail outlets such as Mark’s and Spencer’s Retail, Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop, and Westside. It has a presence in India and Malaysia and other parts of Asia.
It has been already funded by Flipkart, PayPal Ventures, Temasek Holdings, Baron Capital Group, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace, Moore Strategic Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Co., and BlackRock Inc.Invesco Developing Markets Fund. And now in Feb2022 got funded by Alpha Wava Global at a valuation of $5 billion.
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