India's next 35 unicorns may include Practo, BharatPe, Eruditus, Vedantu

The vibrant startup ecosystem is working to boost the investment environment in India both from domestic and global investors, according to consulting firm Praxis Global Alliance

India is fast emerging as a startup nation. In around a decade, the Indian startup ecosystem has scaled to become the third-largest start hub in the world followed by the US and China. 

To gauge the success of Indian startups that are expected to enter the Unicorn club, management consulting firm Praxis Global Alliance, has prepared a quarterly report on India’s Soonicorns landscape – the next billion-dollar startups. 

It has come up with the launch of the second edition of India’s Soonicorns list. The list includes  35 startups that have the potential to achieve a $1 billion-plus valuation (unicorn) in near future.

“The prosperous and vibrant startup ecosystem is working to boost the investment environment in India both from domestic and global investors,” said Praxis.

Praxis did the quarterly analysis of the startups that are valued at $ 200 million or above between 2018 and 2021. The analysis was done by PGA Labs, the market intelligence business unit of Praxis Global Alliance. 

The sectors that were covered included fintech, foodtech, healthtech and edtech. The other sectors included SaaS (software-as-a-service), logistics, e-grocery and digital gaming.

Some of these soonicorns include Eruditus, Vedantu, Grofers, BharatPe, Rebel Foods and Mobile Premier League (MPL). The other such companies include Practo, cure.fit, Indegene, Ecom Express, Dunzo and BrowserStack.

In the previous edition released in December 2020, Praxis had shortlisted 34 startups that are nearing a $1 billion valuation. Out of those 34, four startups including Digit Insurance, CRED, Innovaccer, and PharmEasy have already entered the coveted Unicorn club while one startup filed for IPO.

Experts said that the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated the pace of start-ups joining the ‘unicorn’ club. According to venture capital investors and experts, India is expected to have 150 unicorns by 2025.

Currently, there are 48 Indian start-ups valued at $1 billion or more, and Paytm is the most valuable start-up at $16 billion, according to the Venture Intelligence data.

This week, Chargebee, the leading subscription billing, and revenue management platform, became a unicorn after raising a fresh round of $125 million in series G funding. The round was co-led by new investor Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global. Chargebee is now valued at $1.4 billion, which triples its valuation in less than 6 months.

Here are some of the soonicorns that have the potential to achieve $1 billion-plus valuation in near future, according to the Praxis report:

Table: Valuation of top soonicorns 

Company	Valuation ($ mn)	Company	Valuation ($ mn)
Practo	904	BharatPe	885
Eruditus	850	Rebel Foods	799
cure.fit	775	GreyOrange	700
Indegene	700	Grofers	675
Vedantu	584	Open	552
Navi	524	Ecom Express	500
BrowserStack

500 MPL 450