Happy New Year!
As we begin the new year this week, expectations are heady and there’s definitely a tinge of a hangover after the $41.4 Bn funding boom in 2021!
Startups have set a new benchmark for how they can contribute to the bigger picture and already passed new milestones in 2021.
Of course, one cannot forget Covid-19 and the third wave now looming in many states in India. However, having faced the worst of two devastating waves in 2020 and 2021, startups are now ready to tackle whatever comes next as long as the status of vaccines doesn’t change.
Let’s take a brief recap of how the “Indian Startup Ecosystem” fared in 2021, shall we?
#2021recap
Indian Startups 2021 Wrapped!
🦄A New Unicorn Every 9 Days: With 42 new unicorns this year, India saw a new unicorn startup every nine days in 2021, taking the total tally to 84.
🐘Mega Deals Dominate: Another record in 2021 was the number of mega-deals with 108 individual funding rounds over $100 Mn, which comes up to around 8% of all deals this year.
🌱Seed Funding Grows: The total capital poured in at the growth stage recorded the biggest surge (290%) followed by late-stage investments which rose by 246% from 2020. A whopping 67% of all deals were for under $10 Mn, which is the typical size for growth-stage deals.
⬆️Investor Count Up 2X: In 2021, uncertainty in the market gave way to optimism among investors. Unique investor count surged by nearly 123% from 1,114 to 2,487 this year.
Interestingly, 14 of this year’s 44 unicorns are B2B startups, up from 5 (out of the total 11) unicorns added during 2020!
Here’s a brilliant report that summarises the Indian Unicorns picture on a much deeper analysis front : https://www.unicornsofindia.com/report
As India will close in on 150 unicorns in 2022 and 200 unicorns by 2025, Indian startups are expected to create a value of over $1 Tn by 2025 and employ over 3.25 Mn people. If this isn’t enough to tell you that
THE BEST TIME TO START IS… NOW!
we don’t know what else would.
#weekprime
It’s the New Year Rush!
While most of India had an eye on the clock on New Year’s Eve, food delivery giants Zomato and Swiggy were keenly watching an unprecedented spike in their order numbers.
Social media was abuzz with order numbers growing every hour and the battle of stats between Zomato and Swiggy. The platforms claimed to have processed over 4.5 Mn orders cumulatively for December 31, 2021, with several thousand orders per minute, according to the data shared on Twitter.
Deepinder Goyal(Founder: Zomato) tweeted that Zomato saw over 2.5 Mn orders for the day for the first time in its history. Zomato sold food worth at least INR 91 Cr (approx $12 Mn) for the first 2 Mn orders. Zomato also saw over 7,100 orders per minute at the peak time.
While on the orange army side, it was time for Sriharsha Majety (Cofounder: Swiggy) to respond. And so he did!
Swiggy observed 2X growth, with Swiggy Instamart recording 63% more orders and a 74% increase in GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) compared to the rest of the month, beating its own previous Christmas day peak.
While we love to see the tweet-off between the food delivery giants on the statistics front, it's definitely going to be interesting how both of them expand themselves in 2022, whether it’s on the “quick-commerce” space or “health/fitness” advancements.
#alumnistories
OneCard raises $75 Mn at over $720 Mn valuation
FPL Technologies has raised a round of $76M from QED Investors, Ocean View Investment, Sequoia India, Matrix Partners India and Hummingbird Ventures.
Founded by Anurag Sinha (EEE ’99), OneCard offers first-time credit card users a virtual, cellphone-based card to build a credit score. It also enables an equated monthly instalment (EMI) facility for purchases of Rs 3,000 and above at an interest rate of 1.33% with a repayment tenure of 3-24 months.
Examarly makes it to YourStory’s “Top 10 Startup Bharat stories”
Co-founded by Nishant Shukla (MIN’ 2017), Examarly is an ed-tech platform focused on outcome-based learning for higher education and test preparation.
With the team of the four founders along with 10 interns, they handhold UPSC aspirants through the entire journey of exam preparation by making personalised plans that help them navigate the vast available content.
This saves students 50% or more preparation time!
You can find the link for the article here: LINK.
#funzone
Play Time
Another week! Another Puzzle!
Here’s the link for the second crossword puzzle of our newsletter:
https://crosswordlabs.com/view/e-cell-weekly-newsletter-2
#quotethis
“Our job (entrepreneurs) is to find a synthesis between our vision and what customers will accept, not just to capitulate.”
-Eric Ries, Founder IMVU
#youtubebinge
How to Speak? - An MIT Lecture
An interesting lecture with many takeaways on how to give a presentation (a soft skill critically essential for entrepreneurs), in case you would like to cultivate this skill!
Shameless Plug
We released our Fresher’s Orientation Video 2021 this week and if you haven’t checked that out yet…
What are you waiting for??
(No.. seriously. We put a lot of heart and effort in the video, we’d love it if you’ll have a glance.)🧡
Well that’s all folks!
Hope you enjoyed this edition of E-Cell’s weekly newsletter. We’re trying to think of a name for our newsletter and would love to hear your suggestions!
Do ping us on our official Instagram handle to suggest one for the same!
https://www.instagram.com/ecelliitbhu/
Until next time,
Team E-Cell.🧡