ENTREPRENEURSHIP ALIVE AND KICKING

With 23 unicorns getting minted during the year, India remains a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The funding crunch, shrinking bottom lines due to 'glocal' factors, cash flow hurdles, and the resultant layoffs are all adjustments in the journey that has just begun

- Jyotsna Sharma & Ashish Sinha

LEGENDARY BILLIONAIRE INVESTOR and wealth guru Warren Buffett would often say this in the context of entrepreneurship and investing: “No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” This is true of the Indian startup ecosystem as well. It is still young and evolving, and needs time to mature and become self-sustaining. But there is no stopping it for sure, no matter how adverse the current circumstances are.

Indeed, funding activity has slowed down considerably. A PwC India report states that startup funding in India hit a two-year low at $2.7 billion across 205 deals in the third quarter of CY22. A Crunchbase report showed that funding to venture capital-backed startups in India had fallen to the lowest levels since early 2020. But the ‘funding winter’ is just one part of the big picture.

The bigger picture that remains though is that India is home to the third-largest startup ecosystem on this planet after China and the US. Also, out of the 108 Unicorns, as per the data shared by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), 16 profitable unicorns cumulatively paid income tax of Rs 1,276.6 crore in FY21. Of the 16, Zerodha, Zoho and Dream 11 together paid Rs 949 crore in income tax.

Potential Unicorns