India adds 1,300 new startups, 23 unicorns

Chennai: Over 1,300 technology-focused start-ups were added in 2022, taking the total number of active tech start-ups to 25,000 – 27,000. India also added the second highest number of unicorns in the world — over 23 in 2022.

India continues to be the third largest tech start-up ecosystem globally after the United States and China. The tech start-ups in India have raised a total of $73 billion in equity investments and of this $18.2 billion came in 2022. This was lesser than $24.1 billion raised in 2021, but higher than $13.1 billion raised in pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to a Nasscom report.

The country also added the second highest number of unicorns in the world, with over 23 added in the calendar year 2022. It has a total of 89 technology-focused unicorns. India has 174 potential unicorns and 60 were added into the list in 2022.

Women power in the start-up ecosystem has been rising. Around 36 per cent of unicorns and potential unicorns have at least one woman founder or co-founder.
About 18 per cent of all start-ups in the ecosystem have at least one-woman founder or co-founder and 17 per cent of all investment deals between 2019 to 2022 were raised by women-led start-ups.

The ecosystem also saw 207 mergers and acquisitions last year.

Technology-focused start-ups saw four IPOs in 2022, against 10 in 2021 and among non-tech start-ups IPOs came down from 53 to 29.