U N I C O R N

                                                                
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 UNICORN, as we all know, is  a mythological animal resembling a horse or a goat with a single horn on its forehead.   Interesting characteristics and beliefs   associated with it are:

                      

• prosperity and peace 
• magical healing power of horns 
• a symbol of purity and grace
• it walks so softly that its hooves make no sound  
• it can be captured by maiden only

                                    

 2. I being a banker and finance man is obviously keen  to ascertain Unicorn relationship
with business/ finance world. This curiosity led me to learn that   the term Unicorn was first time coined and used  by  venture capitalist Aileen Lee in a article "Welcome To The Unicorn Club". She is the  founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund, California.

3. In business parlance, a Unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $ 1 billion. There are, at present, more than  800 unicorns companies with total cumulative valuation of ~$2,627bn world wide. Cloud Walk (China), BYJU'S (India), Samsara (USA), Klam (Sweden), Greensil (UK), Messagebird  (Netherlands) and Oyo Room (India)  are a few top unicorns in the world. To completely and clearly  grasp the principle that is connected with  unicorn, it becomes essential to have a brief discussion on Startup too.

4. Startup is defined as young company founded by one or more entrepreneurs for developing a new and unique product / service. These entrepreneurs  are of the  strong belief that there exists demand for such innovative products / services in the market. As  founder of such startup companies have limited resources , they look for funding towards different sources including friends and relatives, venture capitalists, private equity, crowd funding and loans. Under such circumstances, the first and foremost challenge before them is to convince, satisfy and  to prove the validity of their concept to the potential investors to mobilize the funds. Since these are highly risky propositions, the founders of the project have to support their claim that the idea proposed is new and innovative / a great improvement. It is a viable project, economically. 

5. Here it is worth mentioning the initiative, policies and ground level efforts made by Govt. of India to promote Startups ecosystem. The Government, in fact, on 16th January,2016, launched the Startup India' program with a stated objective to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country that would drive sustainable economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities. The initiative primarily aims at  to empower startup to grow through innovation and design.

6. A number of benefits  such as  Self Certification, Tax Exemption, Easy Winding of Company, Startup Patent Application and IPR Protection, Easier Public Procurement Norms, SIDBI Fund of Funds  etc. are being extended by the Govt. to   encourage recognized  Startup under Startup India.

7. Our country is one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world with over 41,000 recognized startups across of 54 sectors and 224 sub-sectors. The startups, so far, are spread over length and breadth of the country. About 80% of  districts have recognized startup. About 4.6+ lakh jobs have since been reported by these startups.

8. As brought out in para 3 above, there are about 800+ unicorn companies in the world including some of the  history's most successful startup such as Microsoft (founded by Bill Gates), Ford Motors (founded by Henry Ford) and McDonald's (founded by Ray Kroc) etc. India with 51 unicorns has emerged as the third-largest unicorn ecosystem after the USA (396) and China (277). Hurun India report states that India added three unicorns per month in 2021 to its total tally of 51(as on 31.08.21). A commendable achievement, indeed. Not only that from Hurun India Future Unicorn List 2021, it is  clearly evident that progress in this regard  is taking place at a rapid pace.

9. Future Unicorns are classified  in two categories:

             1.Gazelle: is startup founded after the year 2000 and has the potential to go Unicorn in 2 years

           2.Cheetah: is a startup founded after the year 2000 and has the potential to go to                    Unicorn in the next four years

  

A substantial  growth of Unicorns   in near  future is expected. Since  there are, at present , about 86 startups -- 32 Gazelles and 54 Cheetah being considered potential Unicorns, as identified in Hurun India Future Unicorn list 2021 .

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10.  On  5th anniversary of Startup India, our Prime-Minister aptly summarised the progress and importance of startups/unicorns as under:

"Startups are the engines of exponential growth, manifesting the power of innovation.  Several big companies are startups of yesterday.  They were born with a spirit of enterprise and adventure kept alive due to hard work and perseverance and today have become shinning bacons of innovation"

11. I would relish to conclude the write up  by re-producing a  screenshot  from an animated  movie  'The Last Unicorn'  that I watched  while compiling this blog