India’s tech startup ecosystem is approximately 15-year-old with the likes of JustDial and Naukri.com among its early lot of internet enterprises. It took around another 15 years for the country to get its first unicorn – MakeMyTrip in 2010. Since then, the ecosystem has churned out 44 such one-horned digital entities that have cumulatively created around $106 billion value so far and over 1.4 million direct and indirect employment annually, according to venture capital fund Orios Venture Partners. Among prominent early-stage VCs, Orios was associated with startups including Ola, Druva, Zostel, Pretty Secrets, PharmEasy, and more.
InMobi, Flipkart, Ola, Paytm, Byju’s, OYO, Swiggy, Zomato, PhonePe, Lenskart, and more had added to the unicorn list over the past decade including the recent ones such as Unacademy, Glance, Nykaa, Zerodha, FirstCry, etc. The ecosystem has already gone through cycles of boom, bust, and funding winter in the last 10 years fueled by valuation bubble, investors’ optimism because of fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) syndrome, failure of multiple emerging startups, and more. Post-2015 correction in how investors look at startup valuations, the focus has been gradually shifting to profitability even as many leading startups continue to burn significant capital annually.
Source: Financial Express
