Try to Google Unicorn companies and you will notice how India dominates the scene. Globally, India has the highest fintech adoption rate. It has over 2,100 FinTechs of which 67 per cent have been set up over the last 5 years alone. India has the second-highest number of unicorns in Asia-Pacific and the third-highest concentration worldwide behind the US and China (Statista). Indeed, Fintech Unicorns in India are increasingly multiplying in size and number.
1. Paytm
Paytm is India’s leading financial services company that specializes in digital payment system, e-commerce and finance. It won the Outstanding Startup of the Year Award at Forbes Leadership Awards in 2016.
2. Razorpay
Razorpay is a platform that enables businesses to accept, process, and disburse payments with its product suite. It gives access to all payment modes including credit card, debit card, net banking, UPI and popular wallets.
3. Pine Labs
Pine Labs is an Indian merchant platform company that provides financing and last-mile retail transaction technology. Founded in 1998, it now has more than 70,000 retailers across India, including major retail outlets such as Mark’s and Spencer’s Retail, Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop and Westside.
4. Groww
Groww is an online investment platform that allows investors to invest in mutual funds and stocks. It provides objective evaluation of mutual funds.
5. BharatPe
BharatPe is a fintech company that caters to the small merchants and kirana store owners of India. The company offers a range of fintech products including interoperable QR code for UPI payments, Bharat Swipe (POS machine) for card acceptance, and small business financing. Moreover, It had announced that it aims to facilitate a loan book of $300 Million via postpe in the first 12 months for its lending partners.
6. Policybazaar
Policybazaar is India’s largest insurance aggregator. It provides a digital platform – website and app – where users compare financial services from major insurance companies. It provides several types of insurance plans like life insurance, health insurance, motor insurance, travel insurance as well as group plans.
7. CRED
CRED is a reward-based credit card bill payment platform; its main feature is allowing users to make credit card payments through its app for which they get rewarded. In addition, CRED allows users to make house rent payments offers short-term credit lines. CRED has become the youngest Indian startup to be valued at $2 billion or higher.
8. Digit Insurance
Digit Insurance is an Indian start-up insurtech which focuses on selling insurance online.
9. Billdesk
BillDesk is an Indian online payment gateway company which serves as an online payment platform for its clients which enables banking and merchant website transactions.
10. CoinSwitch
CoinSwitch is an Indian cryptocurrency exchange platform where users can put and call cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple etc. with best rate.
11. PhonePe
PhonePe is an Indian digital payments and financial technology company where users can send and receive money, recharge mobile, DTH, data cards, make utility payments, pay at shops, invest in tax saving funds, liquid funds, buy insurance, mutual funds, gold and silver
12. Zeta
Zeta is a banking tech company which provides an Omni Stack comprising modern credit and debit processing, BNPL, core banking and mobile experiences. It caters to banks and fintechs globally.
13. ChargeBee Technologies
Chargebee is a SaaS product company. It is a recurring billing and subscription management tool that helps SaaS and SaaS-like businesses streamline Revenue Operations.
14. CoinDCX
Coin DCX specializes in crypto-enabled financial services. It aims to provide a user-friendly experience where users can access a wide range of financial products and services backed by industry-leading security processes and insurance protection.
15. Acko
Acko offers an online insurance policy provider through its digital platform. The company has various products and opportunities in main pillars in insurance such as personalized insurance products based on user consumption behaviors.
16. Vendantu
Vedantu is India-based e-learning platform featured with real-time personalized learning. With this platform, students and lecturers can connect online on time.
17. Upstox
Upstox is a tech-first low cost broking firm in India providing trading opportunities at competitive prices.
18. Slice
Slice is a payment and credit startup that extends hassle-free payment cards to deal with daily payments, which can also be converted into Equated Monthly Instalments or EMIs for the ease of the user without any added expense.
19. Oxyzo Financial Services
Oxyzo Financial Services Private Limited provides technology solutions. The Company designs and develops financing platform for small and medium enterprise loans.
20. CredAvenue/Yubi
Yubi, formerly known as CredAvenue, is an Indian fintech company that connects businesses with financial institutions, banks and other lenders through its digital platform.
21. Open Financial Technologies
Open is a neo-banking platform for SMEs and startups that enables businesses to manage their finances effectively.
What have the Investments in Fintech been like in India
The ban of high-value banknotes in late 2016 by the Government of India along with the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic amplified a digital payment drive and accelerated the rise of fintech.
While the digital payment market is ever-growing in India, the country is still fighting to achieve better financial inclusion. This is an issue that comes hand in hand with the alarmingly high illetricity rate in India (over 70%).
On a more positive note, Indian FinTechs have attracted close to $10 billion in equity capital funding over the past decade reports Credit Suisse. According to KPMG’s Pulse of Fintech, India is close to matching its total fintech investments of 2020 with $2 billion in investment in the first half of 2021 alone. Additionally, according to Bain & Company’s India Fintech Report 2022, the first half of 2022 has seen funding of $4.2 billion, more than twice the amount seen in the first half of 2021. Notably, Digital banking was the object of most investments thanks to India’s unique model which allows digital banks to mainly act as software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers with regulatory responsibility as bank partners.
How many Fintech Unicorns does India have?
In just eight months this year, 24 startups have already acquired the unicorn status in India. Indeed, India hasn’t been burdened with the physical banking infrastructure of those in the west, and so was able to adopt new solutions quicker than Western counterparts. Nonetheless, the rise of fintech unicorns cannot be narrowed down to India, this trend has been apparent in many countries globally. For instance, eight of the nine unicorns produced so far this year in the UK belong to the fintech space.
Which Fintech Sectors have the most Fintech Unicorns in India?
The finance and insurance industry has had the most number of companies reaching unicorn status. The Indian fintech ecosystem is made up of various sub-segments: payments, lending, wealth technology or WealthTech, insurance technology or InsureTech, regulation technology or RegTech. Credit Suisse in a report on India’s start-ups and FinTechs revealed that 70% of Fintech Unicorns were into Payments and Digital lending. According to Razorpay, digital payment transactions have grown up to 76% for the past 12 months with several first-time digital payment users. India’s supportive policy framework and regulations along with it UPI have made the country a haven for digital payments.
Indeed, most recent startups have focused on innovative technologies to help reduce the asymmetry of information between financial institutions and investors and thus tackle market inefficiencies.
