As we celebrate India’s emergence as the third largest startup ecosystem globally, this is the time to review and acknowledge the emergence of unicorns, soonicorns and hyper-growth ventures. There is a need to shift the focus from valuations to the value organisations are creating for the better.
The Indian startup valuations have taken a hit, yet India has still managed to create more unicorns in the first five months of 2022 compared to the year before taking the count to 105 unicorns.
Celebrating The Spirit
BW Businessworld brings the inaugural edition of the BW Unicorn Summit and Awards 2022 which thrives to recognise not only unicorns but well-performing startups which hold the high potential to become unicorns soon. The summit looks at unicorn creation, from the lens of time-tested tech innovators, traditional entrepreneurs and fledgling yet promising startups, along with rich ringside narratives from policymakers, investors, academia, accelerators and incubators. BW Unicorn awards play a critical role in order to pay attention to the high-potential startups instead of running after a tag of ‘Unicorn’.
This unique initiative encourages changemakers by looking at how founders have built Unicorns, and concurrently, drawing a playbook for today’s innovators aspiring to become tomorrow’s pathbreakers. BW Unicorn Awards have received an overwhelming number of nominations from across the sectors such as enterprise tech, consumer tech, edtech, fintech, proptech and more.
Driven By Jury
More than 300 entries were received which were then brought down to over 150 post the first screening round. Subsequently, after the second level of deliberation, a total number of 69 nominees were shortlisted and invited to present before the power-packed jury panel. Nominations received for Unicorns Award were put through a multi-tier screening and shortlisting procedure to get the list of well-deserved winners. The jury process followed a certain set of parameters to evaluate the entries and these were the uniqueness of the service/product, current market value, the potential for growth and customer attraction till date.
The esteemed jury panel included Padmaja Ruparel, Co-Founder, Indian Angel Network; Anup Jain, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners; Sudhir Sethi, Co-founder and CEO, Chiratae Ventures; Saurabh Chandra, Managing Director, BCG India; Pranav Parikh, Managing Partner and Head, Edelweiss Private Equity; Alok Mittal, Co-Founder and CEO, Indifi Technologies; Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-Founder and CEO, Koo App; Bidyadhar Subudhi, Dean (R&D), IIT Goa; Rajat Moona, Director, IIT Bhilai; Sanjay Jain, Partner, Bharat Fund.
Glory They Deserve
The word Unicorn was coined in 2013 and India is no longer rare; creating a unicorn almost every week. Going forward the macro picture seems promising despite the market rightsizing and funding winter. The stakeholders and founders are assertive to pay more attention to create value rather than chasing valuations. Founders’ journey from the prism of innovation, originality and ingenuity to establish a long-term sustainable brand is extremely demanding and unique.
Winners
Here is the edited table
Category | Sub-Category | Founder | Company |
Accelerator | Best Accelerator | Kunal Upadhyay, CEO and Managing Partner | CIIE.CO |
Startups | Most Innovative Product or Service | Chiranth Patil, Co-founder | Riskcovry |
Ankit Prasad, Founder and CEO | Bobble AI | ||
Most Likely To Become Unicorn | Subramanian Vishwanathan, Co-founder and CEO | Disprz | |
Most Daring Woman Leader | Garima Pande, Co-founder | Wandering Jane | |
Best Founder | Saravana Kumar G, Founder and CEO | MMRFIC | |
Jitendra Chouksey, Founder and CEO | FITTR | ||
Soonicorn | Best Technology Use Case | Ram Kewalramani, Co-founder and CEO | CredAble |
Most Innovative Product or Service | Baskar Subramanian, Co-founder and CEO | Amagi | |
Most Impactful Leadership Team | Sanjay Sharma, Founder and MD | Aye Finance | |
Most Likely To Become Unicorn | Ravi Kumar, Founder and CEO | udChalo | |
Gaurav Khatri, Co-founder and CEO | Nexxbass | ||
Best Founder | Pravin Agarwala, Co-founder and CEO | BetterPlace | |
Sanjeev Sularia, Founder and CEO | Intelligence Node | ||
Best Soonicorn | Abhishek Deshpande, Co-founder and COO | Recykal | |
Sachin Agrawal, Founder and CEO | Bizongo | ||
Unicorn | Most Innovative Product or Service | Smita Deorah, Co-founder and Co-CEO | LEAD |
Rahul Garg, Founder and CEO | Moglix | ||
Most Impactful Leadership Team | Akhil Gupta, Founder and Chief Tech and Product Officer | NoBroker | |
Paytm | |||
Best Founder | Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-Founder, Group Chief Executive and Vice Chairman | Fractal | |
Best Unicorn | Paytm |