A historic week for Indian startups, six new unicorns in four days: Know all about them

The historic week (April 5-9) saw six unicorns emerging, out of which four are backed by the New York headquartered investment firm, Tiger Global Management.[Image: Shutterstock]

In a span of four days, six startups minted a valuation exceeding $1 billion displaying a boom for Indian technology companies. This addition takes the total of Indian startups achieving the unicorn status within four months in 2021 to 10.

In 2020, India saw a total of 11 startups achieving this status including Pine Labs, Firstcry, Nykaa, Postman, Zerodha, Zenoti and Unacademy.

The historic week (April 5-9) saw six unicorns emerging, out of which four are backed by the New York-headquartered investment firm, Tiger Global Management. Following are the six startups that newly received unicorn status in the last week:

CRED

The Bengaluru based credit card bill payment platform attained a valuation of $2.2 billion that raised $215 million in its Series D round of funding on April 6.

Founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, a widely-followed entrepreneur, and an active investor who earlier founded digital wallet Freecharge. He sold Freecharge to Snapdeal for over $400 million in 2015, in what was then one of the biggest deals in the Indian startup space.

Cred is a credit-card repayment platform that rewards users with points for paying their bills, which can be used for offers and discounts on various products. It only caters to the most creditworthy customers in India, whose credit score is above 750. Currently, it has nearly 6 million users and 201-500 employees, according to its LinkedIn profile.

Falcon Edge Capital (new investor) and Coatue Management LLP (existing investor) led the latest round of funding. Existing investors DST Global, RTP Global, Tiger Global, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Sofina also invested in this round.

Cred’s valuation has more than doubled in just three months, as it was valued at $800 million in January this year when it raised $81 million in Series C, led by DST Global.

Meesho

Meesho, a Bengaluru based social commerce platform was founded by IIT Delhi graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in December 2015. The company said it has raised $300 million in a new round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

Following the latest funding round, it was valued at $2.1 billion. Existing investors Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway and Knollwood Investment also participated in the latest funding round.

The company has 1001-5000 employees, according to Crunchbase. The founders, Aatrey and Barnwal graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi in 2012 and worked for three years before founding Meesho in 2015.

PharmEasy

PharmEasy, owned by API Holdings, is a Mumbai-based platform that connects over 60,000 brick and mortar pharmacies and 4,000 doctors in 16,000 pin codes across India.

The platforms also provide SaaS solutions for pharmacies to use in procurement combined with delivery and logistics support, and credit solutions to buy over 200,000 medicines from more than 3,000 pharmaceutical manufacturers.

API Holdings raised $350 million in a round led by Prosus Ventures and TPG Growth. The company did not disclose the valuation but sources said it was closed at $1.5 billion, making it the seventh unicorn to emerge from India this year.

The startup, founded by Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah and Mikhil Innani, said the round is a combination of primary and secondary funding totaling $323 million, with an additional $27 million executed and closing imminently, from Prosus Ventures (formerly Naspers Ventures) and TPG Growth.

Existing investors including Temasek, CDPQ, LGT Lightrock, Eight Roads & Think Investments also participated in the Series E round.

Groww

Groww reported its valuation has crossed $1 billion after it raised $83 million in its Series D funding round led by Tiger Global, with existing investors such as Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital, YC Continuity, and Propel Venture Partners also participating in the round in the last week.

Founded in 2017 by four former executives of Flipkart - Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain, Neeraj Singh, and Ishan Bansal - Groww's platform helps users invest in stocks, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, IPOs, and gold.
The Bengaluru based startup now wants to foray into derivatives trading, build out its offering to help investors buy US-listed stocks and debt instruments such as government securities.

The company has more than 1.5 crore registered users. It said 18 lakh demat accounts were opened on its platform since June 2020 and that it is seeing more than 2.5 lakh new systematic investment plans (SIPs) every month.

Gupshup

A messaging platform with operations in Mumbai and the US raised $100 million from Tiger Global at a valuation of $1.4 billion. Founded in 2004, the company’s last funding round was in 2011. It reported an annual revenue run rate of $150 million in 2020.

The messaging platform helps businesses and customers interact with ease using mediums such as SMS, and WhatsApp. It has developed an application programming interface (API) that enables banks or an airline to inform and interact with customers through SMS, or WhatsApp.

The company generates revenue on a per-message basis from the enterprises.
The company is also eyeing public listing soon. As a company, we want to be ready within the year, maybe later this year. But the actual listing depends on external factors that are not in our control,” CEO and founder Beerud Sheth had told Moneycontrol.

He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy​.

ShareChat

Regional language social network ShareChat was valued at $2.1 billion in its latest $502 million funding round. The latest round was led by Tiger Global Management, Snapchat parent Snap Inc and existing backer Twitter and Lightspeed.

Launched by three IIT-Kanpur alumni- Ankush Sachdeva, Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Singh in 2015. ShareChat also owns a short-video app called Moj, which is an Indian alternative to the banned TikTok. Moj has scaled to 120 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) in nine months. The short video platform is also a big draw for investors.
The company has 500-1000 employees, according to Crunch base.

With these six startups, India's unicorn club now has 10 members in just four months. Apart from the above six, Digit Insurance, Innovaccer, Infra. Market and Five Star Business Finance became unicorns in the first three months of 2021.