India is deliberately evolving as the world’s quickest growing startup ecosystem with several startups as of 2022. On today’s date, unicorn startups are not as unknown or uncommon as earlier! Anyway, creating your brand or maybe creating a unicorn startup is not at all an easier task to perform especially when you are a fresher in this industry. A lot of commitment, a determined mind and most importantly hard work is crucial throughout the startup voyage especially to climb the ladder of the unicorns. However, the companies which have already bagged the crown of unicorns in this second month of 2022 here are spoken about in the following article. So, come on let us have a look at the current 8 unicorns of 2022.
LEAD
LEAD is the first edtech unicorn of 2022. Previously LEAD was known as LEAD School. In January, edtech startup LEAD raised an amount of $100 million in the Series E funding round and the investors were Westbridge Capital and GSV Ventures. According to the reports, LEAD’s valuation doubled in the last nine months. The company is looking forward to using these funds to avail affordable and quality education to more than 20 million learners. Currently, LEAD is willing to focus on curriculum innovation, its products and services, acquiring growth and most importantly employing the best talent for different sorts of functions to be done right!
DealShare
DealShare in its Series E Funding Round raised an amount of $165 million and the investors were Kora Capital, Unilever Ventures and Dragoneer Investments Group. They were the new set of investors while the existing investors like Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global also participated in the particular funding round. DealShare bagged the crown of a unicorn startup when the valuation of the company rose over $1.6 billion. The founders of the company are Sourjyendu Medda, Rajat Shikhar, Vineet Rao and Sankar Bora.
Livspace
Livspace is a renovation and home interior design platform. In its recent Series F funding round the company raised an amount of $180 million in funding. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts was the lead investor. This funding round took Livspace into the unicorn club where existing investors like Jungle Ventures, Peugeot Investments, Ingka Group Investments and Venturi Partners also participated among all the others. With this funding, the company is looking forward to focusing on the brand building part across the countries of Singapore and India. Also, Livspace is willing to hire fresh and good talent to support both of their existing and new businesses.
Xpressbees
Xpressbees is a logistics company and the organisation raised a sum of $300 million in its Series F funding round at a valuation of $1.2 billion. The lead investors of the funding round were TPG Growth, Chrys Capital and Blackstone Growth. The existing investors like the Norwest Venture Partners and Investcorp also participated in the current funding round. The company is willing to use this capital for product development, hiring the best talents for different sorts of jobs to be done right and most importantly it is looking forward to increasing its growth and creating a success story!
Polygon
Polygon is currently the leading platform for Ether scaling and infrastructure growth. In its latest funding round, the company raised an amount of $450 million in funding and the lead investor of the round was Sequoia Capital India. The number of investors in the round was 37 where investors like Galaxy Digital, Makers Fund, Alexis Ohanian, Elevation Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Republic Capital, Alameda Research, Steadview Capital, SoftBank, Animoca Brands, Tiger Global, Kevin O’Leary Spartan Fund and many more took part in it.
ElasticRun
ElasticRun is an e-commerce platform that raised an amount of $300 million in its latest Series E funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation. The lead investor of the round was SoftBank. Existing investor Prosus Ventures took part too in the funding round. ElasticRun is looking forward to increasing its growth story. The founders of the company are Saurabh Nigam, Shitiz Bansal and Sandeep Deshmukh. ElasticRun was founded in 2016. ElasticRun works with more than around 125,000 retail outlets present in India and also operates in more than 250+ cities of the country.
Darwinbox
Darwinbox is a Hyderabad based startup. In its latest Series D funding round the company raised an amount of $72 million. The lead investor of the round was TCV. A total number of 8 investors participated in this funding round where Sequoia India, Endiya Partners, Salesforce Ventures, 3One4Capital, Lightspeed India, SCB 10X and JGDEV took part! The company was founded in 2015 and the founders were Jayant Paleti, Rohit Chennamaneni and Chaitanya Peddi.
Fractal
Fractal is an advanced analytics solution provider. It is a United States, New York and Mumbai based startup where an amount of $360 million was announced to be raised in January from TPG Capital Asia. The investment agreement between both of the parties is known to get closed by the first quarter of this year. According to the surveys, the company was valued at an amount of over $1 billion in the funding round. The upcoming round is said to take over the total equity capital raised by the organisation to $685 million and Vivek Mohan and Puneet Bhatia are to join the board of directors of Fractal.
Conclusion
Previously, during childhood, the word ‘Unicorn’ used to be quite familiar with us because we all used to hear about the very creature in certain storybooks or so on. We never thought that the storybook creature would become a regular feature in our financial and business discussions! As of today’s date, the above-mentioned companies have already made their own space in the Indian marketplace. It is nowhere written that all of the unicorn startups will end up being prosperous startups but the thing is no startup should stop chasing its goal especially after reaching a milestone.
