NEW DELHI: India has edged past China to add the most number of new unicorns-startups, valued at $1 billion or more, in the first half of 2022.
While India added 14 new
unicorns
, China added only 11, shows data from the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2022.
The US led the ranking by adding 138 startups in the unicorn club.
“369 new unicorns have been found in the first six months of this year, two a day.
Almost a third of these are doing fintech, SaaS and blockchain. 80% are providing services, with only 20% having physical products. 65% are selling to businesses and 35% to consumers," said
Hurun Report
Chairman and Chief Researcher
Rupert Hoogewerf
.
Globally, 254 new unicorns were added during the first half of 2022.
The US tops the list with 625 unicorns. It is followed by China with 312 and India is in the third spot with 68.
“India consolidated its top 3 spot with 68 unicorns, led by online educator BYJU’S worth $22 billion, followed by on-demand delivery start-up Swiggy ($11 billion) and fantasy sports platform travel-stay finder Dream11 ($8 billion),” according to the Hurun’s report.
An additional 56 unicorns were started by Indian co-founders outside of India, taking the total to 124 unicorns founded by Indians around the world.
Of the unicorns founded outside of India, significantly all were in the US (51), led by the Bay Area, and 2 in the UK, and 1 each in Germany, Singapore and Mexico. Bengaluru added 5 new unicorns in H1 2022, accounting for 2.5 per cent of such companies worldwide.
According to the list, TikTok owner
Douyin
is the world’s most valuable unicorn for the second year running, albeit down 43% to 1.3 trillion yuan ($188 billion).
It is followed by Elon Musk-led SpaceX ($125 billion) and Jack Ma's Ant Group ($120 billion). The list of most valuable unicorns includes
Stripe
, Shein, Binance, Databricks, WeBank, JDT and Checkout.com.
This year’s top 10 unicorns make up 17.6% of the total value of the world’s unicorns. Five are from China, 3 from the US, and 1 each from the UK and Malta.
There are five new faces: fast fashion platform Shein, Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Shenzhen-based digital bank WeBank, Beijing-based digital technology start-up JDT and London-based fintech Checkout.com pushed out Stockholm-based
Klarna
, which has had a terrible year, Sydney-based Canva, San Francisco-based Instacart and, London-based Revolut.
India has more unicorns onshore for the first time
“India – for the first time – has more unicorns onshore than abroad, 68 to 56. The percentage of homegrown unicorns has increased from one third two years ago to 55% today," s/aid Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher Rupert Hoogewerf.
The total number of unicorns worldwide increased by 254 – or 24% – to 1,312 in the six months through June 2022.
By city, San Francisco retained the title of ‘World Unicorn Capital’ with 176 unicorns, up 25. New York overtook Beijing to take second spot with 120 unicorns, up 35. Beijing with 90 unicorns dropped down to third, followed by Shanghai with 69. London with 39 unicorns was fifth, followed by Bengaluru and Shenzhen with 33 unicorns each.
According to the recently released Hurun Global Gazelle Index 2022 half-year report, 44 startups in India will turn into unicorns, that is, hit a valuation of $1 billion, within three years. Named Gazelles, these startups were founded in the 2000s, are worth over $500 million and are not listed on a public exchange yet. This second edition of the Hurun Global Gazelle Index also says that there are 621 Gazelles in the world, based in 33 countries and 151 cities.
The findings further reveal that the USA and China lead the index with 238 and 200, together accounting for 70 per cent of the world's known Gazelles. "200 Gazelles in China made the cut this year, 29 more than last year. Of these 200, 61 were new faces. India stands third with 44 Gazelles," it says.
Biggest drop in valuations
A total of 147 unicorns saw their valuations drop in the last six months, of which 71 were from the USA and 29 from China. Beijing-based Douyin led the way with the biggest drop in valuation, down US$150bn to US$200bn. Sweden-based Klarna saw a 86% drop in valuation, while USA-based Stripe saw a 35% drop in total value during the last six months.
81 unicorns from the last year saw their valuation drop below US$1bn, of which 36 were from the USA and 35 from China, led by Ping An Healthcare Technology, which had a valuation of US$9bn last year.
Industries Disrupted
Financial Services, Business Management Solutions, Healthcare and Retail have seen the most disruptions by unicorns. And, fintech, as a core industry, has the most number of unicorns in the world and is followed by E-commerce and SaaS.
There are 168 fintech unicorns in the world today. 24% are payment technology-related unicorns. The most valuable FinTech unicorns are Ant Group (US$120bn), followed by payments platform Stripe (US$62bn) and WeBank (US$33bn). FinTech dominates with US$742bn or 17.6% of the total value of all unicorns.
Which investors are the best at finding unicorns?
Sequoia retained its title of the most successful unicorn investor in the world having invested in 234 unicorns, up 28 from the last index. Moving up by one rank, Softbank is the second most successful investor with 180 unicorns in its portfolio. Tiger is in the third position with 169 unicorns in its portfolio and Tencent stands fourth having invested in 90 unicorns. Between them, the top three investors have invested in almost 44% of the unicorns in the world.
