Hyderabad set to witness more unicorns

Hyderabad: The year 2022 is turning out to be a growth-focused year for the startup ecosystem in Hyderabad. In a span of just seven days, the ecosystem has seen one startup becoming a unicorn, five startups raising funds, and another selling the stake to a top food aggregator platform. Experts point out that Hyderabad is […]

Hyderabad: The year 2022 is turning out to be a growth-focused year for the startup ecosystem in Hyderabad. In a span of just seven days, the ecosystem has seen one startup becoming a unicorn, five startups raising funds, and another selling the stake to a top food aggregator platform. Experts point out that Hyderabad is set to witness more unicorns — startups valued over $1 billion — in the coming years.

“There are about six to seven startups that are close to becoming unicorns and I am confident that the city will see at least 2 to 3 unicorns this year itself,” says Jayesh Ranjan, principal secretary, IT and Industries Department.

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On Friday, Zomato announced that it will be buying a 19.48 per cent stake in Hyderabad-based ad-tech company Adonmo Inc for a total cash consideration of Rs 112 crore. Earlier this week, Hyderabad joined the unicorn club with the first city headquartered company Darwinbox getting valued above $1 billion. On the same day, two more companies — StanPlus and OurFood announced their funding round.

“All these are positive developments. There were a lot of myths about investments not coming to Hyderabad and that large investors aren’t willing to invest in the startups here. The funds raised in a span of a few days have shattered those myths. These investments prove that a good product will always attract good investors and Hyderabad has been able to create those products,” says Jayesh Ranjan.

Another city startup that is working in the space tech sector Skyroot Aerospace announced fundraising of $4.5 million in a bridge round to Series B funding led by Google’s founding board member Ram Shriram’s Sherpalo Ventures.

In addition, two more startups — Smartron and SustainKart also announced their funding. SustainKart, an e-commerce marketplace exclusively for sustainable products, raised $5,00,000 in its pre-Seed round led by India Accelerator. Meanwhile, Smartron secured a $200 million capital commitment from Global Emerging Markets Group (GEM).

“All these are good indicators for the ecosystem. However, the real inflection point will come when a startup goes for an IPO. That is when we will witness a rush of 50-100 people coming at a time to set up businesses in Hyderabad and also a flush of investors to the ecosystem here,” says Ramesh Loganathan, Professor of Co-Innovation, IIIT-Hyderabad.

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