There were many high moments in the Indian startup ecosystem in 2021. Nine tech startups got listed on the public market, whereas four became unicorns monthly on an average. A unicorn, in startup jargon, is a company valued at or over $1 billion. These startups who are going to be unicorn in the near future are termed as Soonicorns. Here we are listing down 26 Indian startups that are possibly going to be unicorns in 2022.
Soonicorn Startups of India – Approaching unicorns in 2022
ClearTax: Software solutions for financial services
Fintech SaaS platform Clear, formerly identified as ClearTax, has seen a 5X growth in the last 18 months and added more than 3,000 large enterprise customers. It noticed a surge in usage with over 1 million small businesses on the platform, declared the company in a statement. It currently processes 10 percent of India’s business invoices with a GMV of over $400 billion.
Jupiter: Digital Banking Solutions
Jupiter, founded in 2019, is a digital banking platform that allows users to open a bank account digitally, provides Visa debit cards and insights on customer spending in collaboration with Federal Bank and Axis Bank.
Smallcase: Wealth Management and Investment
Smallcase, a fintech startup, has developed a solution for such beginners. The firm has presented readymade portfolios that these investors can choose. Vasanth Kamath, founder, and CEO of Smallcase claimed that the firm recorded a 3x surge from 9 lakh in March 2020 to 28 lakh in March 2021. The company further added that its platform processed Rs 8000 crore investment in FY21.
Rupeek: Digital lending platform
Rupeek was founded in 2015 to offer gold-backed loan products by collecting and depositing the precious metal at the nearest branch of the partner banks that offered the loan. The digital lending platform Rupeek currently operates in 10 cities, including Bengaluru, Mumbai, New Delhi, Jaipur, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Coimbatore, and Pune.
OneCard: Mobile-first Credit card company
OneCard provides first-time credit card users with a virtual, cellphone-based card to help them build their credit score. It also offers an EMI facility for Rs 3,000 and above purchases, with an interest rate of 1.33 percent and a 3-24 months repayment period.
At least two e-commerce players will turn unicorn in 2022:
Purplle: Cosmetics and personal care e-commerce platform
Purplle was started with an initial investment of Rs. 40 Lakhs. In the first month, the company saw a sale of Rs. 45000. this sale happened due to family and friends’ support. The startup gained momentum in the next four months with a monthly scale of 30%.
The startup understood the demands of women in the cosmetic field. The company targeted women who have ages in the range of 21-32 years. The startup also studied the offline cosmetic stores’ weaknesses. These stores can’t keep all brands’ products due to the limited space. Finally, they push customers to take certain products.
Freshtohome: Meat, Seafood delivery
FreshtoHome was founded in 2015 by Shan Kadavil and Matthew Joseph and is based in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. FreshtoHome’s range of products includes fish, poultry, mutton, steaks, and fillet. Fish consists of shells, freshwater, and marine. Furthermore, it enables suppliers to supply their seafood and meat to the website.
Shadowfax: On-demand logistics player
Shadowfax’s innovative business models and deep-technology-driven platform are perfectly positioned to revolutionize and disrupt India’s hyperlocal delivery landscape.
Bansal, Khandelwal, Gaurav Jaithliya, and Praharsh Chandrain co-founded Shadowfax in 2015. Over the last six years, it has grown to a team of nearly 5000 employees, with over 100,000 daily active users who are primarily delivery partners in over 600 Indian cities. The brand claims to fulfil 1 million orders per day in over 7000 different pin codes.
Dunzo: Quick Commerce
In 2021, Dunzo completed the Series E funding round and raised $40 million. Investors including Google, Lightbox and Blume Ventures, etc support Dunzo financially. Dunzo was founded in 2010 and is basically a chat-based app that allows its users to create grocery lists or restaurant deliveries, which are then fulfilled. It uses a mix of AI and human operators to do this. So far, the app has seen 10 lakh downloads via android. In 2017-18, their operational revenues declined by a massive amount to 15.80 lakh from 98 lakh.
Zepto: Quick Commerce
The startup Zepto (formerly known as Kiranakart) was founded earlier this year in April by 19-year-olds Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra, who dropped out of their computer science degree programs at Stanford University to concentrate on Zepto. Zepto assures grocery deliveries in 10 minutes (up to 90% of orders) through a network of dark stores and micro warehouses. The service promises delivery of groceries in under 10 minutes or less, and the best part is customers can order from 7 am to 2 am.
ShipRocket: Automate Shipping Software
Established in 2012, the parent company of Shiprocket has seen multiple pivots over the years. Its current avatar works with courier firms in India and connects merchants, consumers, and supply-chain partners across thousands of pin codes worldwide.
Apart from shipping services, Shiprocket also offers a technology stack to assist retailers in integrating their online stores such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and Zoho for workflow, inventory, and order management.
GreyOrange: Warehouse Automation
GreyOrange is a global technology company unifying AI-driven software and mobile robotics to modernize order fulfillment and optimize warehouse operations in real-time. The GreyOrange Fulfillment Operating System is the only fully integrated software and robots solution that uses advanced fulfillment science to instantaneously evaluate order data and compose the best decisions in real-time to orchestrate people, processes and robots efficiently. The result is a fast, agile and precisely tuned operation equipped to meet the what-when-where expectations of today’s retail consumer perpetually.
Khatabook: Booking keeping for small business
The Khatabook software, which Kyte Technologies run, provides a digital ledger to all small business owners in India. It assists with managing books of accounts and provides reminders for collecting money and making due payments via WhatsApp and SMS. The app is available in over 13 vernacular languages, appealing to many people across the country.
Ninjacart: Meat, Seafood delivery
Fresh startup Ninjacart aims to supply vegetables and fruit directly to apartments and housing societies through its Kirana store network during the national lockdown due to theCovid-19 pandemic in all seven cities in which it operates. Bengaluru-based Ninjacart supplies daily up to 1,500 tons of fruits and vegetables to retailers, with the highest demand coming from Kirana shops.
Rapido: Bike Taxi Service
Rapido started its operations in 26 cities of India. The firm has recorded 400% growth to date. The company’s operations were badly affected by the covid pandemic. Now, Rapido claims that it has recovered its operation by 85 percent.
The company’s auto service, launched in 26 cities, has also recorded a growth of 4X and overall. The company has raised a total funding of $132 million from various investors, including Westbridge AIF, Nexus Ventures, Sabre Investment, Skycatcher LLC, Bace Fund, and Integrated Growth Capital.
Ultraviolette Automotive: Mobility and Energy Infrastructure.
As per Ultraviolette; They live by design, technology and user experience. We are mavericks from across aerospace, automotive engineering and consumer electronics. Their sole mission in life is to redefine mobility. “Almost there” doesn’t excite them! The Brand, in which TVS Motor Company is an investor, is setting up its manufacturing and assembling facility near Electronics City, Bengaluru, where it will start building its high-performance electric motorcycle – the F77 in the first quarter of 2022.
Perfios: Data driven solution for lending and wealth management
The Perfios platform has been developed to analyze e-statements, online bank statements, and paper-based bank statements for credit-decisioning. Ramgopal Cillanki, Senior Vice President, Head of Engineering at Perfios, shares, “With the three capabilities, we have been able to offer an integrated solution that provides a consistent loan processing journey for Perfios clients.”
The Perfios platform is unique because it supports 1700 bank formats for e-statements and data retrieval from the bank’s online websites. This makes it simple for banks and financial organizations to choose Perfios as the default bank statement analysis provider.
Exotel: Cloud Telephony
Exotel is the leading customer communication platform in Asia. Exotel was founded in 2011 by three engineers to assist businesses in bringing order and efficiency to customer communication. Exotel works with some of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing companies (Uber, Ola, Flipkart, Lazada, Quikr, Redmart, and others) to communicate with customers via calls and SMS. Exotel’s world-class, cloud-based solution streamlines customer communication for over 4000 businesses in India, Australia, and Southeast Asia.
Chingari: Video Commerce
Video Quality plays a significant role in short video formats. To make users’ experience better, Chingari added Augmented reality filters to give more advanced tools to the creators. Chingari is purely a youth-centric platform. The maximum users’ age is in between 18 to 35 years.
The app allows users to browse through various entertaining and informative short videos. Also, it gives them the options to download them, like them, share them with friends and family.
CashE: Digital lending
CASHe, India’s preferred AI-driven financial wellness platform with a mission to construct financial inclusion achievable to all, is prepping up for its next growth phase with a series of key leadership appointments. CASHe, With record disbursements, customer acquisitions, top-line growth, profitability, and differentiated product offerings, the startup has witnessed stellar growth in FY 21-22. The company has devised a multi-pronged strategy to accelerate its growth and become the platform of choice for its credit-underserved millennials and Gen Z citizenry while also assisting them with their diverse daily financial needs.
Agnikul Cosmos: Builds satellite launch vehicles
We may have our first space tech unicorn with Agnikul. Operating jointly with ISRO, AgniKul Cosmos manufactures launch vehicles to take small satellites to low earth orbit. The liquid-oxygen-powered launches were halted during the peak of COVID-19 to allow adequate oxygen supply for those suffering from the illness. It was also listed in Linkedin’s top startups of 2021.
UpScalio
UpScalio, a Thrasio-style venture that finances e-commerce brands, announced in December that it has invested an undisclosed sum in four auto accessories brands: Autofurnish, Destorm, Urban Lifestylers, and MotoTrance. UpScalio intends to increase the brands’ annual revenue rate to Rs 100 crore by leveraging their direct-to-consumer (D2C) websites, expanding into newer domestic and international markets, and forming partnerships.
FamPay
The FamPay suite of products contains an app designed specifically for teenagers under the age of 18, which generates a physical and virtual card that can be used across platforms like any other card. Children do not have to depend on their parents for OTPs, and they can plan ahead of time by saving up for them.
FamPay takes approval from teenagers’ parents and then provides the FamPay app to them for registration. The app allows them to do financial activities with the credit provided by their parents. FamPay is also introducing numberless plastic cards for offline transactions. Parents keep track of the total spendings done by the teenagers. If it’s a high ticket transaction, parents consent is compulsory to complete the payment.
Zilingo
Zilingo Pte’s route to becoming a fashion platform with a valuation approaching $1 billion started in December 2014 when Ankiti Bose, then an analyst at Sequoia India, spoke with a neighbour at a house party in the Indian tech capital Bengaluru.
Female founders are still uncommon in the global startup world. Of the 239 venture capital-backed startups worldwide worth at least $1 billion, only 23 have a female founder, according to data from Pitchbook in May last year.
10club
10club, a year-old Indian startup that is building a Thrasio-like venture, raised $40 million recently. One of the Indian startups that raised the most investment in 2021. Basically, it is one of the largest seed financing rounds in the South Asian market.
Zolve
Created by TaxiForSure founder Raghunandan G, the neobank raised $40 million in a Series A round of funding in October 2021 directed by partners of DST Global. It also saw participation by Tiger Global, Alkeon Capital, and others. The company offers cross-border solutions to students and working professionals moving to the United States. Zolve provides immigrants — working professionals and students bound for the US — access to FDIC-insured bank accounts, high-limit credit cards, and debit cards based on their home country credit score.
