The Indian startup ecosystem has reached a new milestone with the 100th unicorn which is a startup with a total valuation of $1 billion and above. The term, Unicorn, was coined by a venture capitalist and a seed investor, Aileen Lee.
Minister of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, Piyush Goyal tweeted: “India = Ideas + Innovation + Investments”
Further, Union Minister of State for Entrepreneurship, Skill Development, Electronics & Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that India is one of the world’s fastest-growing and most exciting startup ecosystems.
On Monday, neo banking fintech portal, Open, raised fresh capital to push up its value to over a billion dollars.
This funding comes just six months after Google, Temasek, Visa, and Japan’s SoftBank invested $100 million in the neobank startup.
According to the survey, India is now ranked number three on the global map of countries with most unicorns behind USA and China.
With a total valuation of $277.77 billion, most Indian startups are in the services sector, contributing over 50% to India’s GDP.
India’s technology industry body NASSCOM also welcomed this announcement that will help in job creation.
Founded in 2017 by Anish Achuthan, Ajeesh Achuthan, Mabel Chacko, and Deena Jacob, Open offers business banking, payments and expense management services to SMBs across the country.
The neobank platform is being used by more than 20 lakh businesses and it processes over $30 billion worth of transactions every year in India.
Startups that entered the Indian unicorn club in 2021 were Flipkart Moglix, BharatPe, CoinDCX, UpGrad, Groww, BlackBuck, Droom, OfBusiness, Meesho, Chargebee, CRED, Digit, Gupshup, Infra.Market, MindTickle, Five Star Business Finance, Innovaccer, Pharmeasy, Sharechat, Urban Company, Zeta, Eruditus, Zetwerk and BrowserStack, Apna, Vedantu, Licious, CoinSwitch Kuber, Rebel Foods, CarDekho, MobiKwik, Acko, The Good Glamm Group, Cure.Fit, Mensa, NoBroker, Spinny, Upstox, Slice, Pristyn Care, GlobalBees, Mamaearth and many more.