Six Indian startups that beat the pandemic to become unicorns this year
Amazon India boasts of having an enviable selection of bestselling books by acclaimed authors. Photo: Mint. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.
NEW DELHI, Oct 12, 2020, Business Standard. Three Indian unicorns have emerged in fintech space and one each in software, edtech and beauty space. A unicorn is a privately held startup that is valued at $1 billion or more, Business Standard reported.
Razorpay
Payments solution provider Razorpay became India’s sixth unicorn this year after it raised $100 million (about Rs 731 crore) in a funding round co-led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and Sequoia Capital India. Razorpay helps businesses modernise their financial infrastructure by providing intelligent automated payment and banking solutions to manage their entire money flow. It currently powers payments for over 5 million businesses including Airtel, BookMyShow, Facebook, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, ICICI Prudential among others and aims to double this to 10 million by the end of this year.
Pine Labs
The point-of-sale and merchant commerce solution provider was the first one to become a unicorn in the year 2020 after a deal with financial services major Mastercard in January. Pine Labs serves over 150,000 merchants in 3,700 cities with over 450,000 merchant touchpoints.
Zerodha
The fintech company Zerodha has a current valuation of $3 billion. GoldenPi, a trading platform, raised Rs 3.5 crore from the Bengaluru-based company in June this year, through Rainmatter capital. Nithin Kamath and Nikhil Kamath, the founders of Zerodha, are the newcomers in the recently-released Forbes’ list of India’s 100 richest 2020.
Postman
The software company, which was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti and Abhijit Kane, is headquartered in San Francisco. Postman, a leading platform for application programming interface (API) development, had secured $150 million in a Series C investment round led by Insight Partners, a global venture capital and private equity firm in June. Used by more than 500,000 companies globally, the Postman API Platform helps them accelerate their pace and effectiveness of software development.
Unacademy
The edtech firm last month raised around Rs 1,125 crore in a funding round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 along with participation from existing investors including Facebook. The company had raised around Rs 780 crore in February in a funding round led by social media major Facebook and General Atlantic. Unacademy has a network of over 18,000 educators and 350,000 paid subscribers.
Nykaa
The fashion e-tailer was started in 2012 by Falguni Nayar. It was valued at $1.2 billion in April. It had secured Rs 100 crore in funding from its existing investor UK-based Steadview Capital as a primary investment, in April this year. The Mumbai-based cosmetic retailer had scaled down operations during coronavirus lockdown.
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