SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS THAT ARE INDIA’S PRIDE

WHAT IS A STARTUP?

A startup is a new business or a company by young entrepreneurs that develops a “unique product or service”. This unique product or service is totally new in the market or maybe similar to the existing product services. However, what makes them unique is their creative ability to lure buyers and sellers from all over the world. Therefore, let’s see some of the successful startups of India that are worth Billion Dollars!

WHAT IS A UNICORN STARTUP?

A startup with a valuation of 1 Billion Dollars or above is a Unicorn Startup. You never know when your brain hits you with creative ideas. This is what happened to some of our successful Indian entrepreneurs. These creative and wonderful ideas paved the way for Billion-Dollar-worth businesses. Therefore, here are the top 10 successful startups in India.

1. FLIPKART

Flipkart is the most successful startup in the e-commerce industry that became a unicorn startup in the year 2013. Two software engineers, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, knew the lucrative potential of e-commerce in the market. Hence, they launched Flipkart in the year 2007. This is same time, when Apple launched the iPhone and people mainly shopped offline. Moreover, there were only 5 million internet users in India at that time. Most of the people would have believed that it was impossible for this startup to boom.

Flipkart denying all those odds became the most successful startup in India. It sells almost all products that are used for day-to-day activities. Cash on delivery and easy return policy are the key elements behind the success of Flipkart. In 2018, Walmart acquired Flipkart’s 77% share for 16 Billion Dollars and made Flipkart the most successful startup of India.

2. PAYTM

Paytm is another successful startup in India.It is the largest digital payment platform. In 2010, Vijay Shekhar Sharma found Paytm under the One97 Communications Limited. It started as a recharge and online money transfer platform. However, India is a country where 95% of the the monetary transactions happen in cash. Therefore, it was a big challenge for Paytm to shift Indians from paying in cash to go cashless. But, Paytm succeeded in this challenge. Moreover, Demonetization and Government campaigns like ‘Digital India’ added to the growth of this huge startup venture. The major investors of Paytm are Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, Soft Bank and Ant group (part of Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group).

Currently, Paytm offers mobile recharges, metro card recharge, utility bill payments, travel, movies and event bookings. Also, it has in-store payments at grocery stores, fruits and vegetable shops/vendors, restaurants, parking tolls, pharmacies and even educational institutions. In 2015, Paytm received the licence from RBI to launch the payments bank.

Freecharge and Mobiwik were the major competitors of Paytm, but with heavy discounts and cash back offers, Paytm moved ahead in this race. However, after introducing UPI, major companies like Google Pay, Phonepe and Amazon Pay are actually giving a tough competition to Paytm!

3. BYJU’S – THE LEARNING APP

When we talk about India’s online education, we cannot ignore India’s second most successful startup, BYJU’S – The Learning App. Byju Raveendran is the founder of Byju. It’s success gave him 46th place in the list of India’s Youngest Billionaire with a net worth of $0.35 as per the Forbes list of India’s 100 Richest people in 2020. In 2015, Byju’s launched its mobile app that provides online quality education to students preparing for exams like IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT and IAS. They also provide training for international examinations such as GRE and GMAT.

This unicorn startup includes investors such as Sequoia Capital India, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Tencent, Sofina, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Napsters Venture, CPPIB and General Atlantic. At the Global Trends Festival 2020, Byju revealed that Byju’s – The Learning App has an average 86% renewal rate with 70 million users and 4.7 million subscribers.

4. OYO ROOMS

Oyo Rooms also ‘ Oyo Hotels and Home’ is one of the biggest hotel chains in the world and is one of the most successful startups in India. Ritesh Agarwal is the founder of Oyo and is the second youngest billionaire in the world. While traveling across India, he found that finding a good hotel with proper facilities is not an easy task. That’s when he found Oyo rooms in 2013 to provide good hotel facilities.

Now Oyo Rooms is the largest budget hotel chain in the country and collaborates with standard hotels in tier 1 and tier 2 cities in India. It also provides an online booking platform to its customers. The main features include budget-friendly rooms, easy to book and cancel facilities and cleanliness. Therefore, Oyo Rooms has been one of India’s most successful startups, being the country’s largest budget hotel chains.

5. OLA CABS

Not getting a cab or a rickshaw on time is a very common issue in India. The founder Bhavish Aggarwal once faced such an issue and decided to convert this opportunity into a billion-dollar business. With the help of the app, people can now book cabs online in almost all major cities in India. It has now become an important part in the lives of people for traveling and for reaching destinations on time. It has also ventured into collaborating with autos.

6. SWIGGY

Swiggy is a late comer in the market of online food ordering. However, the industry started growing rapidly and became a food delivery network. It was launched by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy and Rahul Jamini in Koramangala in Bengaluru. Within 4 years, this successful startup entered the unicorn list and is the fastest growing unicorn startup in India.

The major reason behind Swiggy’s success is that it builds its own logistic network. Whereas, online food chain companies like Zomato use a third-party logistic network for delivery. According to RedSeer , the online food ordering business in India is expected to treble in size over the next 3 years to at least $2.5 billion. Swiggy and Zomato have so far led the way with large funding rounds.

7. DELHIVERY

The e-commerce industry is growing day by day, and the important pillar of e-commerce is logistics. In the year 2011, Delhivery was started by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan and Kapil Bharati to provide faster and affordable logistic services. It offers last-mile delivery, third party and transit warehousing, reverse logistics, payment collection, vendor to warehouse and vendor to customer shipping and more. It entered the unicorn startup list in the year 2019.

The major investors in this successful startup include Carlyle Group, Tiger Global, Fosun International, SoftBank Vision Fund, Nexus Venture Partners and CCP Investment Board.

8. BIGBASKET

Long gone are the days when people had to stand in long queues for buying groceries and FMCG products. Thanks to the internet revolution, as many companies came to the market with the facility of ordering online and home delivery of groceries and products. And BigBasket is one of them. The founders of BigBasket are Mr. Hari Menon, Mr. V S Sudhakar, Mr. Vipul Parekh, Mr. Abhinay Choudhari and Mr. V S Ramesh. In contrast to the most successful startups founded by young entrepreneurs, BigBasket is founded by 5 experienced people.

Bessemer Ventures, Helion, Zodius, LionRock Capital and Meena Ganesh are some of the major investors of BigBasket. With the help of these funding companies, this successful startup was able to expand its business in various cities of India. The company builds warehouses and cold storages to provide fresh groceries and products to their customers.

Grofers and Jiomart are the major competitors of this successful startup. BigBasket found that the demand for a product varies from city to city with the help of data research. Hence, the comapny uses different strategies to fulfill the demand according to the particular city’s preference, Presently, BigBasket offers 12,000+ varieties of products of 1000+ brands in 25 major cities of India.

9. GROFERS

Grofers is an online grocery delivery service founded by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar in 2013. It is one of the successful startups that provides the facility to order groceries and a variety of products from your neighboring store and deliver it at your doorstep. It has also launched a membership program, ‘Smart Bachat Club’ which crossed over 50,000 subscribers in just 2 weeks and 1,50,000 subscribers in just 90 days. SoftBank Vision Fund, Apoletto Asia, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global are the major investors in Grofers.

10. UDAAN

Udaan is one of the successful and the fastest growing unicorn startups in India. Three former employees of Flipkart Amol Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta and Sujeet Kumar, are its founders. The company operates in business to business sectors. This successful startup provides a platform to all the traders, wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers in the remote towns and villages to grow and to reach the people. Udaan also provides working capital loans at cost-effective rates to retailers and wholesalers. The company has a licence of an NBFC (Non-Banking Financial Company) to provide loans to small and medium enterprises. Their former experience as Flipkart employees helps them to run the company as one of the unicorn startups in India.