et soonicorns summit: Key takeaways from Premiere of ET Soonicorns Summit

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At the curtain raiser for the ET Soonicorns Summit, key policymakers, tech industry leaders and prominent names from India’s burgeoning startup ecosystem came together to share valuable insights on what’s needed to unlock the growth potential of the next generation of unicorns and decacorns that are set to define the new India economy.

At the premiere event for the ET Soonicorns Summit, powered by AWS, keynote speakers Dr. Ashwath Narayan C.N., Minister of Higher Education, IT & BT, Science and Technology, Skill Development, Government of Karnataka; Anil Agrawal, Additional Secretary, DPIIT, Government of India; and Puneet Chandok, President, India and South Asia, Amazon Web Services (AWS) highlighted the strong market opportunity for Indian startups to build and scale, not just in India, but also for the world.

Home to over 70,000 startups, about 105 unicorns, and a growing number of soonicorns, the Indian startup ecosystem is now well positioned to leverage the growing emphasis on core business fundamentals and corporate governance amidst the rapid pace of digitisation to scale sustainable businesses with a clear path to profitability, eminent speakers said at the event.

The metrics that matter

Among them were top entrepreneurs Ananth Narayanan, Founder & CEO of D2C ecommerce roll-up Mensa Brands, and Ankush Sachdeva, Co-founder and CEO of social media platform Sharechat, who spoke about the hard lessons learnt in scaling unicorns eyeing global scale and detailed the growth metrics that should matter to future unicorns.

“Earlier, a billion dollar valuation was considered rare. Now, unicorns are no longer rare. So one framing I would love to have is a term for billion-dollar-revenue business because eventually you’re building businesses for the future. I think there are multiple multi-billion-dollar revenue and profitable businesses waiting to be built in India. If you can build those, then valuations will certainly follow,” said Narayanan.

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The co-founders of soonicorns, who joined ETtech and EconomicTimes.com Editors in one-on-one conversations, agreed. Saahil Goel, Co-founder and CEO of logistics aggregator Shiprocket; Prukalpa Sankar, Co-founder of data collaboration workspace startup Atlan; and Tushar Vashisht, Co-founder and CEO of health and wellness platform HealthifyMe highlighted the milestones they’re chasing as they scale businesses that will create ‘real value’ and drive large-scale impact for India and the world.

“For us, it’s always been about making an impact. The whole soonicorn-unicorn-decacorn, it’s a milestone to some extent in the journey, but we try to benchmark against our own milestones, our own aspirations. I’d be much happier saying I’m powering half a million merchants in two-three years; that’s much more of an achievement, where you know we’ve kind of realised our dream. At the same time, I do think that it forces us to think about things more responsibly. It does give you immense pride to be among the select few companies who’ve made it so far. But like I said, it’s to me a marker in the journey and in no way defines it. If anything, it only pushes us forward,” said Shiprocket’s Goel.

Despite the ‘tech winter’ that has forced startups to reframe their growth strategies and focus on fundamentals, overall startup funding in the
first half of 2022 rose 36% to $17.9 billion, compared with the year-ago period. The ecosystem also saw at least 20 new unicorns by July-end, and experts predict unicorns will continue to be added at record pace through the next decade, with a growing number of Indian soonicorns – startups that are poised to become unicorns.

More unicorns likely

“Today, we have startups coming in from each and every state and union territory of the country. Out of nearly 714 districts, 647 have at least one registered startup. There are 70,000 startups in the country that are recognized by DPIIT. Almost 80 startups are being registered every day. And if you look at the sectors, they are spread across 56 different industrial sectors. This is the kind of spread that we have achieved over the last four or five years and has been a result of synergies that have come in the institutionalisation of various measures taken step by step, brick by brick,” said DPIIT’s Agrawal.

Agrawal highlighted the impact of the various initiatives taken by the government to drive the growth of the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem over the past few years, while expressing optimism about the birth of more unicorns in the Indian startup ecosystem.

In a similar vein, AWS’s Chandok said, “We have more than 103 unicorns in India today. Fifty-eight is the number of unicorns we’ve seen created since the beginning of 2021. That’s more than 55% of total Indian unicorns. I don’t expect any of us — I don’t expect India, I don’t expect the startup ecosystem – to slow down in any way. And this trajectory will continue to move at breakneck speed.”

Meanwhile, Karnataka’s IT Minister Dr Ashwathnarayan talked about his focus on cementing the state’s position as India’s startup and unicorn hub, while championing innovation and emerging technologies to strengthen and promote the Indian economy.

“We want to emerge as the best place to do business and in this direction, we’re trying to bring in a lot of reforms and ensure that we become the champions of innovation, startups, technology and engineering, and be in the forefront of emerging areas,” said Dr Ashwathnarayan at the event.

The premiere event and the mega two-day ET Soonicorns Summit, scheduled to take place in September 2022, will serve as the first-ever platform dedicated to catalysing the growth of India’s future unicorns with a focus on building tenable, long-term businesses driven by sound corporate governance and a path to profitability.

Register Now! ET Soonicorns Summit – The Premiere



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