Top 10 Most Successful Startups In India | Multi Billion Dollars Startups

What Is A Startup?

A startup is a young company founded by entrepreneurs to develop a unique product or service, which is totally new in the Market (maybe similar to existing product services) and bring it to market.

What Is Unicorn Startup?

A startup with a valuation of 1 billion dollars or above is known as a unicorn startup. When the brain hits you right, you think of wonderful ideas, one of the brain hitting ideas to some Indians, who change it in a billion-dollar business. Here is the top 10 most successful startups in India.

10. Udaan

Udaan is one of the the successful and the fastest growing unicorn startup in India. Three formal employees of the Flipkart named Amol Malviya, Vaibhav Gupta, and Sujeet Kumar found that, the company had such a strong distribution network but was still unable to reach small towns, that’s why they think to start a company for the purpose of make the goods reach the remotest areas.

The company operates its operation in B2B (business to business) sectors. The startup provides platforms to all the traders, wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers in the smaller towns and villages to grow and reach more people.

The company also provides working capital loans at cost-effective rates to retailers and wholesalers. The company has a license of an NBFC (Non-Banking Financial Company) to provide loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Having experience of working for Flipkart helps them to turn the company into one of the successful unicorn startups in India.

9. Grofers

Grofers is an online grocery delivery service startup founded by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar in 2013.

Grofers give the facility to order groceries, fruits & vegetables, bakery items, flowers, meats, pet care, baby care, and cosmetics products from your favorite store in your neighborhood and get delivery to you.

Grofers has also launched a membership program named Smart Bachat Club, which crossed 50,000 subscribers in just two weeks and 1,50,000 subscribers in just 90 days. SoftBank Vision Fund, Apoletto Asia, Sequoia Capital, and Tiger Global are the major investor in Grofers.

8. BigBasket

There is a time when people used to stand in long queues for buying groceries and FMCG products, but after the internet revolution, many companies come to market with the facility of online order and home delivery of groceries and FMCG products, and Bigbasket is one of them.

Young entrepreneurs found most startups in the world. In contrast, the BigBasket is founded by five experienced peoples named Mr. Hari Menon, Mr. V S Sudhakar, Mr. Vipul Parekh, Mr. Abhinay Choudhari, and Mr. V S Ramesh.

Ascent capital funded the first round by funding of $10 million. Bessemer Ventures, Helion, Zodius, LionRock Capital, and Meena Ganesh are some of the major investors in the BigBasket. With the help of these funds company expand the business in various cities in India. The company builds warehouses and cold storages to provide fresh products to their customers.

Grofers and Jiomart are the major competitors of the BigBasket. BigBasket found that the product’s demand is different from city to city with the help of data research. Hence, the company uses different strategies to fulfill the demand according to the particular city’s preference. Presently, Bigbasket offers more than 12,000+ varieties of products of 1,000+ different brands in 25 major cities in India.

7. Delhivery

The E-commerce industry is growing day by day, and one pillar of e-commerce is logistics. Back in 2011, Delhivery is started by Sahil Barua, Mohit Tandon, Bhavesh Manglani, Suraj Saharan, and Kapil Bharati to provide faster and affordable logistic services.

Carlyle Group, Tiger Global, Fosun International, SoftBank Vision Fund, Nexus Venture Partners, and CCP Investment Board are the major investors in Delhivery.

Delhivery offers last-mile delivery, third-party and transit warehousing, reverse logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-warehouse, and vendor-to-customer shipping, and more. In 2019, the startup was listed in the unicorn startup list.

6. Swiggy

Swiggy is a latecomer in the market of online food ordering, but back then, this is not considered attractive, but after that, the industry is growing rapidly. Basically, Swiggy is a food delivery network. With the Swiggy app’s help, customers can order food online from listed restaurants, while it’s the easiest way for the restaurant to provide home delivery to each customer.

Swiggy was launched by Sriharsha Majety, Nandan Reddy, and Rahul Jaimini in the Bengaluru neighborhood of Koramangala. In the four years, the startup entered the unicorn list; this is the fastest-growing unicorn startup in India.

The major reason behind Swiggy’s success is that Swiggy builds its own logistic network. While online chain companies like Zomata used a third-party logistic network for delivery, swiggy came up with this strategy.

According to the survey of RedSeer, the online food ordering business in India is expected to treble in size over the next three years to at least $2.5 billion, while Swiggy and Zomato have so far led the way with large funding rounds.

Read Also – Most Valuable Top 10 Banks in India

5. Ola Cabs

Issues with cab and rickshaw are very common in India. Once Bhavish Aggarwal faced such an issue, he sees this problem as an opportunity and decides to convert it into a billion-dollar business.

With the Ola Cabs app’s help, people can book cabs online in almost all of India’s major cities. Ola now becomes a part of people’s daily life. Initially, Ola Cabs raised funds from SoftBank Corp and other investors during two rounds of VC funding.

Ola Cabs comes with a new strategy in which it will charge lesser than an average autorickshaw by offering cabs at very low prices of almost Rs.10/km. Ola Cabs has also ventured into collaborating with autos too.

4. Oyo Rooms

Oyo Rooms are also known as Oyo Hotels & Home, is one of the biggest hotel chains in the world and one of the most successful startups in India. Oyo Rooms founded by Ritesh Agarwal, who is one of the youngest entrepreneurs in India. Through the success of Oyo Rooms, Ritesh Agarwal becomes the second-youngest billionaire in the world.

When Ritesh Agarwal is traveling across India, he found that finding the right hotel with good facilities at the right price is not an easy task that’s why he started Oyo Rooms in 2013 aimed to provide a good hotel.

Now Oyo Rooms is the largest budget hotel chain in the country, with over 23,000 hotels, 8,50,000 rooms, and 46,000 vacation homes across the globe. Oyo Rooms collaborates with standard hotels in tier 1 and tier 2 cities in India and provides an online booking platform to its customers.

Easy to book, easy to cancel, cleanliness and budget-friendly rooms are Oyo Rooms’ main features. Oyo Rooms has been one of India’s most successful startups, being the country’s largest budget hotel chain.

3. BYJU’S – The Learning App

After the internet book, everything will be online; the same thing happens with education as well. Many students and their parents find online education more convenient. There are many companies in the field which are providing online education facilities.

When we talk about India’s online education, we can’t ignore India’s second most valuable startup, ‘BYJU’S – The Learning App,’ which is the market leader in its field.

Byju Raveendran is the founder of the Byju’s. The success of Byju gave him 46th place in the list of India’s youngest billionaire with a net worth of $3.05 billion as per Forbes list of India’s 100 Richest People (2020).

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, Byju’s app downloads have jumped to 600% from 2017 to 2020.

In 2015, Byju Raveendran launched it’s mobile app names ‘BYJU’S – The Learning App‘ with this, Byju wants to provide online quality education to students for examinations in India such as IIT-JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, etc. as well as for international examinations such as GRE and GMAT.

This unicorn startup impressed investors includes Sequoia Capital India, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Tencent, Sofina, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Brussels-based family office Verlinvest, development finance institution IFC, Napsters Ventures, CPPIB, and General Atlantic.

2. Paytm

In 2010, Vijay Shekhar Sharma found Paytm under One97 Communications Limited. Paytm was started as a recharge and online money transfer platform.

India is the country where 95% monetary transaction happens in cash, so it’s challenging for the Paytm to shift Indians from cash to cashless but Paytm succeeds in it. Demonetisation and some government campaigns like Digital India very much help Paytm to grow faster.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Soft Bank, and Ant group (part of Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group) are major investors of Paytm.

Presently, Paytm offers mobile recharges, utility bill payments, travel, movies, and events bookings, as well as in-store payments at grocery stores, fruits and vegetable shops, restaurants, parking, tolls, pharmacies, and educational institutions. In 2015, Paytm received a license from the Reserve Bank of India to launch the payments bank.

Freecharge and MobiKwik were the major competitors of Paytm, but with heavy discounts, cashback offers, and good public image, Paytm moved ahead in the race. After introducing UPI (Unified Payments Interface), some major players came into the market like Google pay, Phonepe, and Amazon Pay, which are giving a tough fight to Paytm.

1. Flipkart

E-commerce changes the way we shop, and Flipkart is the most successful startup in the e-commerce industry that became a unicorn in 2013.

Two software engineers named Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal knew the potential of e-commerce and the internet boom, so they found Flipkart in September 2007. That time scenario is different; Apple launched the iPhone, people prefer to shop offline, and only 5 million internet users in India.

Cash on delivery, easy return policy are the key points behind Flipkart’s success. Flipkart sells almost all product which is used in day to day activities. In 2018, Walmart acquires Flipkart’s 77% share for $16 billion, which made Flipkart the most successful startup.

According to one survey, only 1 startup out of 10 became success, hat’s off to founder who take a risk in the country where most of the people looking for secure government job, but instead of this they make the difference.