According to official data, India has seen the 2nd most unicorns emerge in 2021. The country on the top of the list in unsurprisingly the United States of America while India placed second. This is a massive achievement for the Indian government and people as it shows that start-ups from the country are growing well and have shown promise for venture capitalists to invest in them.
A unicorn is any start-up that has hit a valuation of at least one billion USD. All big companies have massive valuations and any company that has a big valuation especially one that is over a billion dollars is an indicator that the company is in the right path and that the business model is doing well.
In the year 2020, India finished third in the unicorn race. Unsurprisingly the United States of America took the top spot, while China came second. But in 2021, India overtook China as the country came down to third spot.
In the year of 2021 alone, 519 start-ups earned their unicorn status. Out of the 519 companies, India took the silver medal with 32 new unicorns while China fell down to third with a respectable 27.
Not only did India gain a new achievement, but so did the entire world as the head count for unicorn crossed one thousand in the beginning of the year. This means that the number of businesses that are worth over a billion dollars is now over a thousand.
Out of the thousand plus, over 50% of them are based in the United States of America. Almost 200 of them are situated in China and the island of Hong Kong. India takes the bronze medal followed by the United Kingdom and Germany trails just behind.
So as the data suggests, even though India created the second most unicorns this past year, China and Hong Kong together overall have more unicorns. The paradigm is slowly shifting towards South Asia and India is now fighting with China as the apex country in the Asian continent.
The government of India has done a good job in fostering the entrepreneurial spirit and even making it easy for promising businesses to get loans, go public and grow even with large players taking up huge space in the market.
Start-ups are now looking like great places to work at and seem like a great place to further your career as they grow in popularity every year in India.