The document summarizes insights from a study on India's high-growth and unicorn startups and founders. Some key findings include: 1) 50% of India's unicorn tech startups are in e-commerce, while 12.5% are in adtech and analytics respectively, 2) On average, it takes Indian unicorn startups 6.12 years to reach a valuation of over $1 billion, 3) 83% of high-growth startups have 2-3 co-founders, with 43% having 3 co-founders and 39% having 2 co-founders.

1. The #DreamUnicorn Project : Insights On India’s High
Growth (And Unicorn) Startups And Founders.

2. SECTORS & STARTUPS
Of India’s unicorn startups, 50% of unicorn tech
startup are e-commerce companies while Adtech is
12.5% and so is Analytics, Classified and Foodtech.
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3. FROM
START
TO
HIGH-­‐GROWTH.
HOW
MANY
YEARS
DOES
IT
TAKE
TO
GROW
BIG?
ON
AN
AVERAGE,
IT
HAS
TAKEN
INDIAN’S
UNICORN
STARTUPS
6.12
YEARS
TO
JOIN
THE
UNICORN
CLUB.
0
3
6
9
Flipkart Snapdeal Ola Inmobi Paytm MuSigma Zomato Quikr
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credit:
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4. THE IDEAL NUMBER OF CO-FOUNDERS
83% of High growth startups have 2 or 3 co-founders. Out of these, 43% of high
growth startup have started by 3 co-founders while 39% of them started by 2 cofounders.
Solopreneurs, the single-founder are in minority (only 13% of high growth startups are
founded by single founder).
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credit:
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5. STARTUPS AND AGE : IS THERE A CORRELATION?
THE AVERAGE AGE OF HIGH-GROWTH
STARTUP FOUNDER IS 29 AND THE
AVERAGE UNICORN FOUNDER’S AGE
IS 28.4 YEARS.
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credit:
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credit:
facebook
page
(Piku)
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6. ENTREPRENEURSHIP: CAN YOU GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME?
73% UNICORN TECH FOUNDERS HAD NO PRIOR STARTUP
EXPERIENCE !
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7. JOB EXPERIENCE : DOES IT HELP? HOW MUCH IS ‘TOO MUCH’?
20% founders of unicorn startups had 2-4 years of work experience while 40% of them
had less than 2 years of working experience before they started up .
The average years of working experience for unicorn tech startup founder is 4.2 Years.
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8. ENGINEERING
EDUCATION
&
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
93% OF HIGH GROWTH STARTUP FOUNDERS ARE ENGINEERS!!
43% OF FOUNDERS OF THE HIGH-GROWTH PRODUCT STARTUPS ARE
ENGINEERS FROM IITS.
Image
credit:
iitr
website.

9. MBA AND
ENTREPRENEURS
HIP
67% founders of the unicorn
Indian Startup are Non-
MBAs, while 27% founders
have done MBA. 6%
founders have M.Tech / MS
degree.
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10. WHERE DO UNICORN FOUNDERS COME FROM
74% of unicorn tech startups are from
Tier 2 cities and 13% are from Tier-I
and Tier 3 cities.
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11. WHICH CITY RULES THE MOST?
BANGALORE AND NCR FARE EQUALLY WHEN IT COMES TO
UNICORN STARTUPS (37.5%), FOLLOWED BY MUMBAI (25%).
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12. India’s Unicorn Club
The Indian product revolution has just begun. We currently have less than 10 tech Unicorns, but
many are on the way to become one.
Celebrating the Indian spirit of innovation and perseverance, NextBigWhat presents an insightful
study on India’s unicorn founders and high-growth technology product startups. We have taken
a deep look at various elements that make a great entrepreneur- right from educational
background to finding a correlation between work experience and entrepreneurial success.
Methodology
Apart from the unicorn startups (with more than a billion dollar in valuation), we looked at
several high-growth technology startups across different categories (Enterprise, Consumer,
Healthcare, Education etc) and came with a list of 35 startups that are a representative sample
(of high growth startups in the country).
We believe that the ecosystem needs several debates and discussions - fuelled by actual data.
About NextBigWhat
NextBigWhat is India’s biggest startup media platform that focuses extensively on fostering the community of entrepreneurs,
early adopters and investors.
At NextBigWhat, we see several great startups every week. We interact, engage with amazing founders and as a key player in
shaping up the startup ecosystem, we believe that a data driven startup study will create more talking points, debates and
discussions leading to collaboration and partnerships.
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13. BUY YOUR COPY
http://www.nextbigwhat.com/indianstartupreport/
http://www.nextbigwhat.com
Email: ashish@nextbigwhat.com
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