Conventional Unicorn lists show 30-35 names in India, but Credit Suisse's research report reveals that the nation has 100 unicorn companies with a combined market capitalisation of $240 billion.
About two-thirds of these unicorns, companies with a valuation of over $1 billion, have been established after 2005 due to an influx of favourable infrastructure, funding, and regulations.
"An unprecedented pace of new-company formation and innovation in a variety of sectors has meant a surge in the number of highly valued, as yet unlisted companies," the report said.
The report titled '100 Unicorns: India's changing corporate landscape' claims to have covered companies beyond the normal technology or technology-enabled sectors. It also includes unicorns in non-banking finance, biotech, pharma and consumer goods companies. It even studied infrastructure companies like new ports or renewable energy companies.
Some of the unicorns featuring in the list include Wonder Cement, Manipal Hospitals, Joyalukkas, Kurl-On, Serum Institute of India, Piramal Glass and PolicyBazaar Insurance.
The reasons for an explosion of unicorns in India, according to the report, are inflow of funding, expansion of the internet, penetration of mobile phones and highly-skilled human resources.
The highest growth and capita is expectedly in the booming FinTech companies and education technology companies like Byju's that grew exponentially during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The report highlighted non-conventional sectors like software-as-a-service (SaaS), gaming and logistics, where growth has been registered. "These are only at the top of a fast-growing pyramid of 80,000 startups in India, which are incrementally now nearly 10% of new companies formed every year; the number of firms is up 70% in 8 years," the report said.
Most of these startups are concentrated in tier-I cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, the National Capital Region (NCR), Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai.