Global Unicorn Index 2021: India Ranked 3rd Replacing UK; US Tops followed by China

India displaces UK to be 3rd top country hosting unicornsAs per the Global Unicorn Index 2021 report released by the Hurun Research Institute India ranked at 3rd (by adding 33 ‘unicorns’ in 2020) by displacing United Kingdom (UK) to the 4th spot. In 2020, India ranked at the 4th spot.

  • US, China comprise 74% of unicorns: The United States (US) and China still continue to bag the top two ranks in the list by adding 254 and 74 unicorns, respectively.
  • India ranked third (with a total of 54 unicorns) with Edtech company Byju’s as the most valuable unicorn in India, with a total valuation of $21 billion followed by mobile ad-tech firm InMobi (US$12bn), travel-stay finder OYO Rooms (US$9.5bn).

Global Unicorn Index 2021 (Top 100 Unicorns):

Rank Company Country City
Top 3 Companies
1 ByteDance China Beijing
2 Ant Group China Hangzhou
3 SpaceX US Los Angeles
Indian Companies in the Top 100 Unicorn Ranking
15 BYJU’S India Bengaluru
28 InMobi India Bengaluru
49 OYO India Gurugram
79 Ola India Bengaluru
100 PharmEasy India Mumbai
100 Swiggy India Bengaluru

Top countries and cities where the world’s unicorns are based: 

Rank Country No. of Unicorns
1- US 487 (254 unicorns added newly)
2- China 301 (74 unicorns added newly)
3↑ India 54 (33 unicorns added newly)
4↓ UK 39 (15 unicorns added newly)
5↑ Germany 26 (16 unicorns added newly)


Rank City No. of Unicorns
1↑ San Francisco 151 (+83)
2↓ Beijing 91 (-2)
3↑ New York 85 (+52)
4↓ Shanghai 71 (+24)
5- Shenzhen 32 (+12)

Key Points:

i.2021 is the most successful year in History for Unicorns, as Hurun Research found 1,058 Unicorns in the World, almost double the 586 of 2020.

ii.In addition to the domestic companies, there are 65 unicorns founded by Indians abroad, mainly in Silicon Valley. Indians founded 119 unicorns, of which 65 are outside of India and 54 are in India.

iii.Top 10 Unicorns of the world make up 25 percent of the total value of the world’s unicorns. 4 are from the US, 3 from China and 1 from each of Australia, the UK and Sweden.

iv.Hurun Research identified 673 new unicorns in 38 countries. The USA added 347, followed by China with 146 and India with 41. India’s InMobi was one of the top 10 new unicorns.

vi.Financial Services, Business Management Solutions, Healthcare and Retail have seen the biggest increase in the number of unicorns in 2020

vii.FinTech and Software as a Service (SaaS) are the core industries of today’s unicorns, followed by E-commerce and Artificial intelligence (AI).

viii.No Unicorns: Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Poland are the largest countries in the world by GDP without a Unicorn.

About Unicorns: Unicorns are privately held start-up companies having a valuation of more than $1 billion.

About the report: The report was released by the Hurun Research Institute in association with the Guangzhou City Commercial Bureau and Huangpu District, a ranking of the world’s start-ups founded in the 2000s, worth at least a billion dollars and not yet listed on a public exchange.

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