The Economic Times reported that Google, a prominent US tech company, has leased over 617,000 square feet of office space at Atrium Place in Gurugram, one of the biggest office space agreements of 2025. The building, which was created in collaboration with DLF and Hines, represents Google’s ongoing foray into the corporate real estate sector in India.
The deal is a component of Google’s long-term strategy to increase its footprint in the National Capital Region (NCR), even if the lease’s terms and financials are still unknown. The most recent agreement was reached months after the business leased 550,000 square feet from Table Space, a managed office provider in another commercial facility in Gurugram.
India a Hot Spot for Google as it Renews Bangaluru Office Lease
Google IT Services India extended its office lease at Bengaluru’s Bagmane Capital Business Park for a further five years in May 2025, paying INR 90 crore a year. The 870,000 square foot workspace is spread between two towers, Kyoto East and Kyoto West, and is next to Google Ananta, the company’s largest campus in India, which can accommodate 5,000 workers. Propstack records state that Google will pay INR 7.5 crore in rent each month, or INR 86.25 per square foot. Additionally, a total of INR 38 crore has been deposited as security, divided between the two towers.
Google Also Renews Mumbai’s BKC Lease
Google Cloud and Google India extended their office leases at the First International Financial Centre (FIFC) in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), one of the priciest corporate districts in India, in February 2025. The Mumbai contract, according to the property records Square Yards examined, spans two floors and 110,980 square feet. The monthly rent is INR 3.55 crore, and the lease will be in effect for five years beginning in June 2025. After three years, there is a 15% rent increase clause in the agreement. Google paid a security deposit of INR 9.64 crore, stamp duty of INR 1.87 crore, and registration fees of INR 30,000.
Quick Shots
•Google
leases 617,000 sq ft at Atrium Place, one of the largest office deals in
2025.
•Atrium
Place developed by DLF and Hines; part of Google’s strategy to grow its NCR
footprint.
•Google
had earlier leased 550,000 sq ft from Table Space in Gurugram.
•Mumbai
lease includes INR 3.55 crore/month rent, INR 9.64 crore security deposit,
and stamp duty of INR 1.87 crore.
•Google is strengthening its
presence in key Indian metros—Gurugram, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.
Elon Musk-led electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla is allegedly finalising two locations for its showrooms in Delhi and Mumbai, marking another milestone in the company’s efforts to establish a foothold in India. According to sources cited by an international news agency, the company has decided on locations for its showrooms, which will span 5,000 square feet and be located in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex and Delhi’s Aerocity. According to the report, these showrooms would only be used to sell the company’s imported EVs; they would not be used as service centres. This comes after it was revealed in December of last year that Tesla was in negotiations with prominent real estate company DLF to look at potential locations for its showroom in India, including the Cyber Hub complex in Gurugram and DLF’s Avenue Mall in Delhi.
Additionally, the development coincides with the company’s eagerly awaited debut in the Indian market. Musk, the richest man in the world and the CEO of Tesla, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week while he was in the United States. During their conversation, Musk talked about topics that Modi is “passionate about, such as space, mobility, technology, and innovation,” according to a post on X.
Tesla Announces New Hiring Plans in India
Tesla has taken a big step by starting its employment process in India in this short time frame and after Modi’s visit to the US, where India and US President Donald Trump agreed on a trade deal roadmap. It would appear that Tesla is reaffirming its plan to enter India.
Tesla, which has long had a small presence in India, is currently hiring for 13 positions, both back-end and customer-facing ones. Following years of negotiations that experienced numerous setbacks due to tax exemptions and local manufacturing regulations, the news has rekindled rumours regarding Tesla’s long-awaited debut into India. Musk has long criticised India’s high import taxes, claiming that they are a significant obstacle to Tesla’s growth there. At the moment of Tesla’s action, US President Donald Trump is advocating for strict tariffs.
Picture Still Not Clear
Tesla’s abrupt decision to begin hiring in India has raised the prospect of large investments coming to the nation, but is there more to this than what first appears? Whether Tesla will get the tax breaks it has long desired is still up in the air. Additionally, we are currently unaware of Tesla’s plans to manufacture or assemble in India. However, the timing of Tesla’s ambitions to hire people in India has sparked a lot of debate due to growing tariff concerns and Musk’s tight relationship with Trump.
Now a significant Trump buddy, Elon Musk has a lot of influence within the government. Trump’s election to a second term in office means that US trade policy will probably become more assertive. Although Tesla had previously backed out of its intentions for India, the country may now feel pressured to provide more favourable terms due to the shifting political climate. Tesla has been pursuing reduced import taxes for years prior to making significant investments in India. In the past, New Delhi has lowered electric vehicle import duties for businesses that made at least 41.5 billion rupees ($500 million) and set up local manufacturing within three years. However, Tesla faces growing competition in India’s quickly changing EV industry.
The Indian startup environment is steadily improving in 2024 after plunging to a seven-year financing low during the extended funding winter of 2023. At $12 billion, the total amount of money raised by Indian entrepreneurs increased 20% year over year (YoY), reaching levels last observed in 2020.
The main highlight of the 2024 funding trend was Mumbai surpassing Bengaluru to become the nation’s most funded startup hub, according to the Indian Startup Funding Report 2024, even though the increase in overall funding has given the founders something to be grateful for and raised hopes for a better 2025. Mumbai’s startup funding skyrocketed to $3.7 billion in 2024, up from just $1.5 billion the year before, with an astounding 154% year-over-year (YoY) growth.
Speaking on this development, Tanay Sharma, COO & Co- Founder, CITTA, sated “It’s exciting to see Mumbai overtaking Bengaluru as India’s most-funded startup hub in 2024. For years, Bengaluru has been the go-to city for startups, often called the ‘Silicon Valley of India,’ but Mumbai’s rise underscores the city’s versatility and growing appeal as a startup destination. Mumbai brings its own unique advantages to the table. Being the financial capital, it naturally attracts a strong investor network. Add to that its access to diverse industries like media, entertainment, fintech, and real estate, and it’s no surprise that the city is drawing significant startup funding.”
Similar thoughts were echoed by Shreya Sharma, Founder, Rest The Case, she added, “Mumbai’s rise as India’s most-funded startup hub in 2024 isn’t just a reshuffling of numbers—it’s a powerful story of how the Indian startup ecosystem is evolving. From attracting $3.7 billion in funding—a staggering 154% jump from the $1.5 billion it raised in 2023—to dethroning Bengaluru, Mumbai is proving it’s more than just the financial capital; it’s the future of entrepreneurship. What’s driving this shift? It’s Mumbai’s unique blend of financial institutions, diverse talent, and the city’s relentless energy. Sectors like fintech, media, and consumer-focused startups have found their footing here, bringing a fresh perspective to India’s startup landscape.”
“For a music-tech startup like Hoopr, Mumbai’s vibrant creative scene and access to a diverse talent pool across sectors have always been significant strengths. Overall, I also feel that Mumbai has a much stronger culture of inclusivity. I believe the city is poised to become a leading hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in India. That said, there is still a long way to go before Mumbai can rival the kind of ecosystem that enables startups to thrive and flourish in Bengaluru,” stated Gaurav Dagaonkar, Co-founder & CEO of Hoopr.
Why Mumbai Notched Ahead of Bengaluru?
Zepto‘s numerous large finance arrangements during the year are partly responsible for this surge. In June 2024, the fast commerce juggernaut raised $665 million in its Series F fundraising round, nearly doubling its valuation from $1.5 billion to $3.6 billion. In August and November, the quick-commerce giant raised a further $340 million and $350 million, respectively. As a result, Zepto contributed 37% of Mumbai’s overall 2024 fundraising boost. Notably, Zepto relocated its headquarters from Mumbai to Bengaluru this year. To keep the data consistent, Mumbai has been given credit for its funding rounds.
“Zepto, this rising star contributed a whopping $1.3 billion to Mumbai’s total funding in 2024, showcasing how game-changing ideas are finding solid ground in the city. While Bengaluru still leads in the sheer number of deals (285 in 2024 compared to Mumbai’s 175), Mumbai’s growth signals that India is no longer a one-hub nation,” opined Sharma.
In terms of median ticket sizes, Mumbai also surpassed Bengaluru, rising 15% year over year to $3.4 million. But when it came to the number of deals, the city trailed Bengaluru. In 2024, Mumbai had a meagre 4.5% increase in investment deals, with 175 projects coming to fruition. Bengaluru, in contrast, continued to hold the top spot with 285 transactions, which is 14% more than the 249 deals that were signed in 2023.
Why Bengaluru is Still a Major Player?
Mumbai is unquestionably a significant hub, but the city has suffered from a few issues. The departure of major corporations like Zepto from Mumbai would have a big effect. In the past, Ola has relocated its headquarters from Mumbai to Bengaluru. If key actors leave an ecosystem after it has grown, it will not thrive. According to Rajesh Sawhney, the creator of GSF Accelerator, these businesses require people as they grow, but Mumbai’s prospects are continually harmed by the city’s inability to get talent at a reasonable price.
Since the majority of new founders come from larger startups or huge tech businesses, Bengaluru is gaining talent and startups from Mumbai. Future business owners are leaving Mumbai at the same time that big corporations are. He continued by saying that even though the city has the biggest pool of cash, there aren’t enough new businesses there, which results in little seed-stage activity.
While Base-Level Activity is Still Low, Late-Stage Funding is Flourishing
In 2024, Mumbai saw a significant increase in the number of growth-stage investment deals. In 2024, the city’s growth-stage startups raised $472 million or more, a 28% year-over-year increase. Additionally, the number of deals increased 67% year over year to 50 deals. In addition to the growth stage, Mumbai’s late-stage funding saw a 206% YoY increase to $3 billion or more. Furthermore, in 2024, there were 29 late-stage deals, a 16% increase.
Mumbai accounted for four of the top ten investment deals in the Indian startup ecosystem in 2024. In addition to Zepto, notable investments were obtained by Mumbai-based startups PharmEasy, Eruditus, and Rebel Foods. In April 2024, the Manipal Group chairman Ranjan Pai’s family office led a $216.2 million fundraising round for the healthtech unicorn PharmEasy. Following in October, Edtech unicorn Eruditus raised $150 million in a Series F investment spearheaded by TPG’s global impact investing platform. Temasek led the $210 million Series G investment round for cloud kitchen unicorn Rebel Foods in December.
What’s Up Next For Startups In Mumbai?
Mumbai’s consumption is still high, and the city is still a financial centre with the media, entertainment, and Bollywood sectors at its heart. Consequently, the region is expected to produce advances in areas such as media technology and direct-to-consumer businesses. Additionally, the Maharashtra government is launching numerous startup initiatives. According to Uday Samant, the minister of industries for Maharashtra, the state hopes to increase the number of startups it has from the current 8,300 to 50,000 in the near future.
The good news is that, thanks to the state’s proactive government measures, startups are seeing Maharashtra as a prime location to establish their manufacturing operations. The IPO-bound electric two-wheeler manufacturer Ather Energy said last year that it would open its third factory in the state to construct battery packs and e-scooters. India’s goal to become a global centre for chip production was further strengthened when the Maharashtra cabinet approved Adani Group’s plan to establish a $10 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility in partnership with Israel’s Tower Semiconductor. IIT Bombay’s Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SINE) is also bolstering Maharashtra’s startup scene by establishing its first venture capital fund, worth INR 100 Cr, to assist tech-focused firms.
For more than INR 450 Cr, Amazon India has purchased a 38.18-acre plot of land in Palava, close to Mumbai, from Lodha Group, a company known as Macrotech Developers, with plans to construct a hyperscale data centre.
According to a media report, the previously approved floor space index, which has a development potential of around 4.16 million square feet, will be made available to Amazon Data Services India, a division of Amazon India.The report also stated that when the sale agreement was executed and registered, Amazon Data Services India paid Macrotech Developers more than INR 396 Cr of the entire agreed sum. Once a few requirements are met, the remaining amount of more than INR 54 Cr will be paid.
Amazon Expanding its Data Centres Globally
According to data analytics firm Propstack, which was quoted in the story, the corporation also paid INR 27 Cr in stamp duty for the deal’s November 12 registration. This development coincides with Amazon‘s plans to build more data centres worldwide. In order to modernise and expand cloud infrastructure in India to match the increasing demand, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud division, announced more than a year ago that it will invest $12.7 billion in data centre infrastructure by 2030.
In light of this, in September, AWS was in talks to invest $2 billion in Telangana to increase the state’s capacity for data centres. Two data centre infrastructures have been opened by AWS thus far, one in the Hyderabad region and one in the Mumbai region.
Expansion is Aligned with India’s Growing Digital Economy
According to sources, the business has made significant investments to expand its data centres in Saudi Arabia, the UK, Italy, and other nations. The rapid growth of India’s digital economy, where the majority of people have access to digital learning platforms, social media, e-commerce, digital transactions, online gaming, and streaming services, is driving up demand for dependable data processing and storage capabilities, which explains the growing interest in data centres.
Global tech companies have made significant investments in data centres, and both Google and Microsoft are interested in purchasing land in India. In addition, the data centre market in India is anticipated to rise steadily at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.84%, reaching an estimated $9.27 billion by 2027.
The property registration documents obtained by CRE Matrix show that in November 2024, Equinix India Pvt Ltd, a US-based data centre company, paid INR 155 crore for 5,597 sq m (1.38 acres) of land in the Chandivali neighbourhood of Mumbai. According to the records, the land lot and the building, which has a total built-up area of 5,386 square meters, have been purchased.
In the first half of the year, the nation’s overall data centre stock increased by 21%, according to a report by Savills India. With a commanding 54.9% of the total capacity, Mumbai was in first place, followed by Chennai (12.3%), Bengaluru (8.2%), and Pune (7.2%).
Trishneet Arora is an Indian Entrepreneur, Ethical Hacker, and Author. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the cyber security company, TAC Security Solutions. He has written several books based on cyber security, ethical hacking, and web defense. He was bestowed with the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2020 by the Entrepreneur magazine in the Security Services Category.
He was named in the Fortune 40 Under 402019 list of India’s Brightest Business Minds. He was listed in the Forbes 30 Under 302018 Asia list. He is profoundly known as Mark Zuckerberg of India and is highly praised for what he has achieved in his tender 20s. Moreover, his company is predicted to achieve a $1 billion net worth in the next year. With Trishneet Arora’s net worth of around INR 1100 crore at the age of just 30, let’s look at how Trishneet’s journey has been from a middle-class family to get into the esteemed Forbes List.
Learn more about Trishneet Arora, his net worth, education, family, TAC Security, and more from this article. This story of Trishneet Arora will surely spark some inspiration & dedication in many!
Trishneet Arora- Journey From a Middle Class Family to Forbes List
Trishneet Arora Story
Trishneet Arora- Personal Life
Trishneet was born in Ludhiana, Punjab, India. He came from a middle-class family. He had no background in computer engineering or so in his family. His parents were not happy with his studies as he was solely interested in the technical knowledge of computers and hardly liked the theoretical structure of school education. His passion grew from playing video games to cordially understanding the hardware of the system.
Trishneet Arora- Education
Trishneet had no interest in the formal structure of school education. He failed in standard 8th but his technical knowledge led him to cross a milestone in his professional career. Not much is known about his further education and qualifications.
However, his fascination for computers did not let him focus anywhere else. He focused only on learning new computer skills and techniques. Gradually, he became fascinated with ethical hacking. He read international books that helped him to learn the required knowledge of computers and hacking.
Trishneet Arora- Professional Life
He has conducted several training sessions with the officials and helped the Punjab and Gujarat Police in investigating cyber crimes. Reliance Industries, Central Bureau of Investigation, Punjab Police, and Gujarat Police are some of his crucial clients.
He is a cyber security expert and is also famous for authoring books like The Hacking Era,Hacking TALKwith Trishneet Arora, and Hacking with Smart Phones. He held countless seminars, lectures, and workshops based on technical manuals throughout his career.
At age 19, he started his own cyber security firm, TAC Security Solutions. The famous filmmaker Sunil Bohra is working on a biographical film based on the life of Trishneet Arora. The film is expected to be released soon with Hansal Mehta as the Director of the movie.
Trishneet serves as the Founder and CEO of TAC Security, headquartered in Mumbai, India. He founded the cyber security firm on27 February 2013. The company has worked with Fortune 500 companies. It is considered one of the Empanelled Cyber Security Auditors for the Union Government, that manages UPI and NPCI.
TAC Security
The company offers protection to corporations against data theft and network vulnerabilities. It primarily provides vulnerability assessment and penetration testing services. He also asserted that there have been innumerable attacks against different portals of his company.
The venture has four office locations across two countries. It also offers cyber security to various Indian companies including Reliance Industries. TAC Security raised Pre-Series “A” funding from Indian Investor Vijay Kedia in 2016. Before that, the firm had inducted the former Vice President of Cognizant, Subinder Khurana on its board.
In June 2021, Tech Mahindra announced a partnership with Trishneet Arora’s cybersecurity firm, TAC Security. The partnership will leverage AI and user-friendly analytics to help reduce vulnerabilities across the entire IT stack to safeguard clients’ applications and infrastructure against cyber threats.
Along with Tech Mahindra, TAC Security has partnered with 21 global partners from 9 countries, including Google, IBM, and Deloitte. TAC Security’s revenue has 1.5 times in FY 21-22 from the previous year of FY20-21.
Trishneet Arora- Success Story
He started his career in the IT field as a Tech Instructor. He variably made a good network by conducting sessions at many places. He eventually got recognized and wasrecommended to companies and government organizations for providing training in IT infrastructure and data security issues.
While continuing with the offered work, he knew that someday he would build a promising future with a well-established cybersecurity firm. His hard work and determination led to the formation of his company, TAC Security Solutions, in 2012.
The Gujarat Police Department officials were impressed by Trishneet’s speech, which was delivered in 2013 and they invited him to conduct a workshop for their crime division. His journey of competing with the criminals while working on cybercrime for the law started henceforth.
Recently, Trishneet Arora announced that he will offer jobs to Agniveers. Agniveers are the candidates who will enroll under the Agneepath Scheme of the central government of India. They will be given 4 years of training in the armed forces of their choice to fulfill the dream of joining the Indian Army and serving the nation.
“Agniveers are an important asset to the society, our youth is the strength of the nation that would be an honour to give back, contribute and empower the youth. The people in reference are going to be empowered to be cyber warriors and we are grateful for their services so far,” – Founder and CEO of TAC Security, Trishneet Arora.
The cyber security company, TAC Security has won more than 100 Awards globally in FY 21-22 by Forbes, Fortune 500, and more. Trishneet Arora also got many awards for his entrepreneurship.
Ranked 6th Youngest Rich Indian on Hurun Rich List (2024)
Listed in the Forbes India Top 100 Great People Managers (2020)
Conferred with Entrepreneur of the Year award (2020)
Listed in the Fortune India’s 40 Under 40 (2019)
St. Gallen Symposium listed his name in Leaders of Tomorrow (2018)
Listed in the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30
GQ Magazine listed him in the 50 most influential young Indians (2017)
Received Punjabi Icon Award from PCHB (2015)
The Chief Minister of Punjab, Parkash Singh Badal conferred him with the State Award on the 65th Republic Day (2014)
FAQs
Who is Trishneet Arora?
Trishneet Arora is an Indian Entrepreneur, Ethical Hacker, and Author. He is the Founder, Director, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the cybersecurity company, TAC Security Solutions.
How much is Trishneet Arora Net Worth?
Trishneet’s net worth is INR 1100 crore (September 2024).
What is Trishneet Arora’s Education?
Trishneet had no interest in the formal structure of school education. He failed in standard 8th but his technical knowledge led him to cross a milestone in his professional career.
Where is Trishneet Arora from?
TAC security founder, Trishneet Arora is from Ludhiana.
What is TAC Security Solutions?
TAC Security is a global leader in vulnerability management that protects Fortune 500 companies, leading enterprises, and governments around the world.
In response to the announcement that it has formed a subsidiary to market financial goods, Jio Financial Services Ltd.’s stock increased by more than 1.6% in Friday’s early trades, August 16.
In a stock filing on August 15, JFSL shared the news that the company has formed a totally owned subsidiary called Jio Finance Platform and Service Limited on August 14, 2024.
This new enterprise, which will have its headquarters in Mumbai, will provide a comprehensive suite of banking and related services.
Jio Financial Services is going to put up INR 1 lakh to buy 10,000 equity shares, having a face value of INR 10.
The new subsidiary’s certificate of incorporation was received on August 15 from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Shares of Jio Financial Services started the day on the up at INR 324 on the NSE and continued to rise, reaching an intraday high of INR 325.5.
Company’s First AGM
The first annual general meeting (AGM) of z will be conducted on Friday, August 30, as announced on August 5, by the firm.
For the sake of convenience and accessibility, the conference will be held by Video Conferencing (“VC”) and other Audio-Visual Means (“OAVM”).
Compared to the same period last year, when it was INR 332 crore, Jio Financial Services’ consolidated net profit for Q1FY25 was INR 313 crore, a year-on-year fall of 5.7%.
In the reviewed period, total revenue rose to INR 418 crore from INR 414 crore in Q1FY24, a slight rise of 0.97%.
Decline on Total Interest Earned
The overall interest earned for the quarter fell at INR 162 crore, a 20% year-over-year and 42% sequential fall.
The net benefit from increases in fair value increased substantially, climbing by 25% annually and 101% quarterly, to INR 218 crore.
About JFSL
In July of 1999, JFSL was initially established as Reliance Strategic Investments Private Limited, which was originally constituted under the Companies Act of 1956. In July of 2023, Jio Financial Services Limited was officially established as a company.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has registered JFSL as an NBFC-ND-SI. The company is a holding company, and it will run its financial services business through its consumer-facing subsidiaries, which are Jio Finance Limited (JFL), Jio Insurance Broking Limited (JIBL), and Jio Payment Solutions Limited (JPSL), as well as through a joint venture that is called Jio Payments Bank Limited (JPBL).
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organisations. The content in this post has been approved by CoinDCX.
A massive increase in the number of internet users has reactivated virtual world concepts and spawned a new market phenomenon known as cryptocurrency to enable financial transactions such as purchasing, selling, and trading.
Cryptocurrencies are digital representations of precious and intangible objects that can be used in a variety of applications and networks, including online social networks, online social games, virtual worlds, and peer-to-peer networks.
In recent years, virtual currency has been widely used in a variety of schemes. It’s clear that cryptocurrencies are an important and rising element in today’s digital economy.
CoinDCX is a cryptocurrency trading site, which is famous as one of India’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges. The company earned the unicorn status by raising $90 million on August 10, 2021, and turned into India’s first unicorn crypto startup.
Here we will delve deep into the CoinDCX company, where you will find all about CoinDCX, CoinDCX Founders, its Funding, Investors, Mission, Vision, Business and Revenue Model, Challenges Faced, Future Plans, and more. So, stay glued.
Billed as India’s largest and safest cryptocurrency exchange platform, CoinDCX allows users to legally exchange various cryptocurrencies. It is built for all types of traders, taking into account their trading background, risk tolerance, and trading frequency, allowing customers to trade their crypto assets according to their requirements.
CoinDCX is a company that is working on a cryptocurrency trading network. The business is focused on developing cross-border financial services that ensure a smooth and continuous flow of resources. The trading experience is quick, reliable, and effortless thanks to its liquidity, powerful wallet, and impenetrable protection. CoinDCX has given its traders access to a variety of industry-first products that enable them to trade using exchange liquidity.
Currently, CoinDCX Go offers a range of tokens in INR pairs such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Binance Coin (BNB), Chainlink (LINK), EOS (EOS), Tether (USDT), Cardano (ADA), Stellar Lumens (XLM), Ripple (XRP), Basic Attention Token (BAT), Matic Network (MATIC), Tron (TRX) etc.
CoinDCX announced its 3rd birthday on April 7, 2021. Three years ago, CoinDCX has begun an exciting journey of providing cryptocurrency trading and exchange services to the general public. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) declared a banking ban for cryptocurrency and related entities around the same time. In addition, India’s crypto industry was in desperate need of a shake-up. It was enough to keep the momentum going, and CoinDCX began with a single goal in mind: ‘Cryptocurrency Adoption.‘
The services of CoinDCX are tailored to fit all styles of traders, taking into account their trading history, risk tolerance, and frequency of trading. The company’s mission is to democratise finance and make investing more accessible to the general public.
CoinDCX announced the launch of CoinDCX Go app on January 20, 2021. A future Bitcoin app that allows users to legally purchase Bitcoin and other common cryptocurrencies with a single click, CoinDCX Go stands as a simple, safe, and secure method to invest in cryptocurrencies.
CoinDCX – Industry
CoinDCX is a part of the cryptocurrency industry, which is growing at an unimaginable pace across the globe. Looking at the global cryptocurrency industry, we can discover that it reached a valuation of $1,782 billion in 2021. The same sector is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 58.4% and will reach $32,420 billion by 2027. While looking at the growth of cryptocurrency in India, the same industry is inching to touch a valuation of $241 million by 2030, as of December 2021.
CoinDCX – Founders and Team
CoinDCX was founded by Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal in April 2018.
Founders of CoinDCX – Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal
Sumit Gupta
Sumit Gupta is known as the Co-founder and CEO of CoinDCX. Sumit holds a B.Tech in Electrical and Electronics, and an MTech degree in Electronics and Signal Processing, from IIT Bombay. He served as a Data Research Analyst at Columbia Business School before joining Sony as a Software Engineer. However, he left the role after a little more than a year and co-founded ListUp before leaving it too and founding CoinDCX.
Neeraj Khandelwal
Neeraj Khandelwal is another Co-founder of CoinDCX, who also serves as CTO of the company. Khandelwal also is an alumnus of IIT Bombay, who completed his graduation in Electrical Engineering from the same university. It is Khandelwal who leads the technical development of the CoinDCX products.
The CoinDCX team created the entire platform from the ground up. Full-stack developers, blockchain developers, machine learning engineers, app developers, software engineers, and data scientists make up the 100+ members team, giving them the expertise to incorporate any innovative logic or functionality in our market. CoinDCX plans to have a workforce consisting of 200+ members soon.
CoinDCX – Startup Story
Sumit Gupta first learned about distributed ledger technology when Bitcoin mining was gaining popularity. This is when the concept of putting together different decentralised marketplaces and cryptocurrencies, which serve as the marketplace medium of exchange, stayed with him.
He then reached out to his friend Neeraj Khandelwal, with whom he worked to bridge the crucial market gaps between this emerging technology and global consumers. The duo realised that blockchain traders, who could keep track of thousands of crypto trades every second, lacked a single trading network. In April 2018, the IIT-Bombay graduates launched CoinDCX as a result of this.
The startup claims to have had a daily trading volume of more than $10M and a monthly trading volume of $400M since its launch. After researching the industry and the potential of crypto technology, they launched the DCX journey with a cryptocurrency exchange in 2018.
CoinDCX – Mission and Vision
CoinDCX mission and vision statement says,
“CoinDCX envisions to enable global financial inclusion of billions of people around the planet with a crypto-based financial services. We aim to make decentralized financial services accessible to the common man on their palms and tips.“
CoinDCX – Name, Logo and Tagline
DCX is a company based in Singapore that specialises in crypto-enabled financial services, and so the name ‘Coin’ DCX is a fitting add-on to let the company ooze of uniqueness.
The CoinDCX business model has established single-point access to trade all cryptocurrency instruments available in over 500 markets, according to the founders. It claims to have developed a highly scalable trade machine engine capable of processing one million transactions per second. Any transaction or exchange on CoinDCX incurs a transaction fee. Deposit fees (charged on exchanging currencies), withdrawal fees, trading commissions (0.01 percent of the overall transaction is normal on any exchange), and listing fees are how CoinDCX makes money, just like any other cryptocurrency exchange.
The trader will convert INR to Cryptos and vice versa on DCXInsta, gain by lending their holdings with DCXlend, and leverage trades with DCXmargin on DCXtrade’s 500+ markets. CoinDCX aspires to be the world’s best cryptocurrency exchange. Its patented liquidity aggregation model gives users access to liquidity from the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges.
CoinDCX – Growth and Revenue
CoinDCX is popularly hailed as India’s first crypto unicorn. Founded in 2018, CoinDCX brings easy investing and trading solutions for cryptocurrency-based products for all. This ISO-certified crypto platform, which is insured by BitGo, provides an array of products like CoinDCX, CoinDCX Pro, DCX Learn, Cosmex, and more. It is the only crypto startup in India that has raised 3 CoinDCX funding rounds in less than a year.
CoinDCX witnessed a 45.78% growth in its installed users between October and November 2021 alone. The growth of CoinDCX definitely depends on the innovative ideas on which CoinDCX was founded, its ability to battle with the challenges thrown in, the funding rounds it has witnessed, and the innovative and interesting marketing strategies that CoinDCX executes.
Some more growth highlights of CoinDCX are:
CoinDCX became the first crypto unicorn in India valued at $1.1 billion as of August 10, 2021, with the latest funding round where the former Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group took part along with a bunch of the company’s existing investors – Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Block.one and more. CoinDCX was valued at $2.15+ bn last in April 2022.
CoinDCX has grown its user base from 150K to 400K in just 15 months and currently over 1.4 crores users.
The quarterly trading volume of CoinDCX is over 16,500 users.
CoinDCX has already crossed $10 billion in trading volume in February 2021
It has witnessed a 4X growth Q-o-Q in daily active users
It has listed 500+ coins and 1000+ trading pairs
CoinDCX Revenue, Financials and More
CoinDCX’s Indian business, Neblio Technologies, witnessed a remarkable growth in its net profit in FY21, which rose 9X YoY to become Rs 4.4 crore from Rs 45.6 lakh in FY20.
All of it started with the Supreme Court verdict of March 2020, which lifted the banking ban on the trade of cryptocurrency in India. CoinDCX started seeing quite a growth starting from August 2020 onwards. It noticed a 38% month-on-month (MoM) growth since its inception in 2018. This is due to the fact that more and more Indians started to show interest to participate in the global crypto economy.
The CoinDCX operating revenue surged by more than 527% YoY from Rs 6.2 crore in FY20 to Rs 38.9 crore in FY21.
The expenses also ballooned by more than 7X, which increased from Rs 5.7 crore in FY20 to Rs 40.7 crore in FY21.
CoinDCX Financials FY20-2023
CoinDCX Ventures
CoinDCX launched CoinDCX Ventures with an aim to establish its own venture investment arm on May 10, 2022. The venture investment arm of the Indian crypto-exchange unicorn, CoinDCX Ventures will help the company invest in early and late-stage crypto and blockchain startups. Rohit Jain, a Harvard Business School alum has been appointed by the startup as the Senior Vice President and the Head of Ventures and Investments to lead the CoinDCX Ventures which is designed to strengthen the digital asset ecosystem of India and give a push to the country’s digital economy. According to the Co-founder and CEO of CoinDCX, Sumit Gupta, CoinDCX Ventures is nothing short of a “great milestone”, and that the crypto exchange has plans to invest around Rs 100 crores in CoinDCX Ventures within the next 12 months.
CoinDCX “Earn” Crypto Yield Initiative
CoinDCX has announced the launch of its new initiative on May 26, 2022. This “Earn” crypto yield initiative that CoinDCX launched, will allow the crypto asset holders to earn interests on their crypto assets.
The platform will deploy the assets under ‘Earn’ among the wide array of yield generating options like lending, margin trading, and staking, in order to create returns. This new opportunity to yield income promises no lock-in periods and withdrawals at any moment, thereby offering the customers full flexibility and control over their cryptocurrency assets. However, the tenor must be of seven days.
CoinDCX grew considerably even during the pandemic, speaking about which, Sumit Gupta, the CEO and Co-founder of CoinDCX said in a statement, “This has been the most exciting year for CoinDCX. While the pandemic forced everyone indoors, CoinDCX scaled up exponentially and continues to do so. Our team tripled in number from 30 in March to 90 in December, and we are continuing to hire aggressively.”
If more investors looked into these emerging liquidity alternatives as a result of the global pandemic, interest in digital assets grew steadily. As institutional and individual investors adopt these emerging asset classes to diversify their portfolios, this trend is expected to intensify exponentially, according to analysts.
India is regarded as a developing market for cryptocurrencies, with retail investors aged 25 to 40 spending millions of dollars every day on cryptocurrency trading in the nation. In the April-June quarter of 2020, the exchange says it saw a 3X increase in total volume traded and a 4X increase in daily active users.
“In the end of 2020, interest in digital assets was growing consistently as more investors explored these new liquidity options. With the global events this year, we’re seeing this trend accelerate exponentially, as both institutional and individual investors embrace these new asset classes to diversify their portfolios,” Block.one’s CEO Brendan Blumer said.
CoinDCX – Funding and Investors
CoinDCX has raised around $245 million over 8 Coindcx funding rounds that the company has seen. The last (Series D) round of funding came in on April 19, 2022, and helped CoinDCX raise $135 mn. Pantera Capital and Steadview Capital led this CoinDCX funding round, which helped the crypto unicorn raise its valuation to around $2 billion. The previous round of funding helped the company raise $90 million, which turned the company into an Indian unicorn startup at a valuation of $1.1 billion on August 10, 2021.
The CoinDCX funding till date is as follows:
Date
Round
Amount
Lead Investors
April 19, 2022
Series D
$135M
Steadview Capital and Pantera Capital
August 10, 2021
Series C
$90M
B Capital Group, Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital and others
Dec 22, 2020
Series B
$13.43M
Block.one
May 26, 2020
Series A
$2.5M
Polychain
Mar 23, 2020
Series A
$3M
100x Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Polychain
Mar 20, 2019
Seed Round
–
Bain Capital Ventures
January 7, 2019
Secondary Market
–
–
March 30, 2018
Seed Round
–
–
CoinDCX has been funded to date by some of the famous venture capitals in the world of startups like Steadview Capital, Pantera Capital, B Capital Group, Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and more, which have led to elevating CoinDCX to the position of the first crypto unicorn of India. However, little was known about the shareholding pattern of CoinDCX until now. This is why we have taken a dive into the shareholding pattern of the company.
Here goes CoinDCX shareholding pattern, as of April 29, 2022:
Owning Company/Individual
Percentage of Stakes
Polychain Ventures
19.40%
Block One Investments
18.52%
Neeraj Khandelwal
14.36%
Sumit Gupta
14.36%
Bain Capital
7.13%
Others
6.43%
Jump Capital
3.73%
B Capital
2.96%
Cadenza Capital
2.79%
Steadview Capital
2.38%
Coinbase
2.34%
Uncorelated fund
2.01%
Pantera Blockchain fund
1.46%
Choi Sung Ho
1.11%
Vivek Nagpal
1.01%
The shareholding status of CoinDCX shows that Polychain Ventures owns the highest stakes in the company whereas the co-founders of CoinDCX – Neeraj Khandelwal and Sumit Gupta, have 14.36% of stakes each. Reports say that the collective valuation of the co-founder is over $590 mn.
CoinDCX – Partnerships and Campaigns
CoinDCX Makes Amitabh Bachchan its Brand Ambassador
CoinDCX has seen quite some partnerships that involved Bollywood actors and more. The company didn’t see any brand ambassadors until it partnered with the veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan, who became the first brand ambassador of the brand according to the reports dated October 4, 2021. With this agreement, CoinDCX aims to boost the overall knowledge of crypto and popularise the currency as an emerging asset class. Furthermore, Bachchan is also deemed to be the new face of the latest campaign by CoinDCX.
According to CoinDCX, Bachchan’s personality matches the brand’s values. Amitabh Bachchan, who is always forward in his league, whether it is in movies or anything else, is the paragon of wisdom, which will help the company add more credibility. Besides, the veteran actor has been a crypto investor himself and has already been successful in launching his own NFT (Non-fungible token), thereby gathering a considerable amount of knowledge of the crypto space. “His knowledge will prove valuable in building trust and credibility amongst new users. We are certain that his association with CoinDCX will help bring greater visibility to the world of crypto and develop a strong brand recall for us,” mentioned Sumit Gupta, Co-founder, and CEO of the brand.
CoinDCX is yet to proceed with its ad campaign with Amitabh Bachchan as of October 15, 2021. The company has reportedly put the advertisement campaigns with the legendary actor due to the lack of clarity on the regulation and policy framework. On the other hand, Amitabh has also disclosed in a recent blog post that he will be reconsidering the advertisement campaign signed with the crypto trading major. He had also mentioned that he would be revoking his endorsement with the pan masala brand Kamala Pasand on the same blog.
CoinDCX Ropes in Ayushmann Khurana
The crypto unicorn has roped in celebrated actor Ayushmann Khurana for its new campaign titled “Future Yahi Hain” on October 18, 2021. This CoinDCX campaign is designed to address concerns surrounding crypto investments of Indian audiences.
#BitcoinLiyaKya Campaign
CoinDCX has launched a digital campaign titled #BitcoinLiyaKya, which is a humorous take on the inclusion of cryptocurrencies like bitcoins. This campaign aims to drive more audiences to use bitcoins via companies like CoinDCX.
HAPPY DAY REWARDS Campaign
CoinDCX launched the “HAPPY DAY REWARDS” campaign to fuel its crypto awareness campaign across the country and present crypto as a dominating asset class.
CoinDCX Happy Days
The campaign, which started on 19th September 2021 and ended on October 15, 2021, brought opportunities for numerous eligible new users to win up to Rs 1 lakh worth of Bitcoin (BTC) every day.
Some other partnerships that CoinDCX saw are:
The unicorn crypto startup partnered with BITS Pilani on March 8, 2022, to foster research, development, and innovation in crypto among the students in India.
CoinDCX partnered with Solidus Labs on February 19, 2022. This collaboration is aimed to enhance anti-money laundering protection.
Partnership with Onfido – CoinDCX partnered with Onfido. The UK-based company that has its headquarters in London, is recognised as a world leader in AI for identity verification and authentication and was partnered with by CoinDCX to help the company figure out whether the user identities of the users’ identity documents are authentic.
Partnership with BitGo – CoinDCX collaborated with BitGo in May 2020 to secure Indian crypto trader funds.
CoinDcx partnered with Cryptocurrency Exchange OKEx, with over 50 million users worldwide, OKX is a global spot and derivatives exchange for cryptocurrencies and the second-largest exchange by trading volume.
CoinDCX – Achievements
CoinDcx is rewarded with the following recognitions from industry leaders:
• Great Place to Work Award 2021 & 2022.
• Tech Start-up of the Year Entrepreneur Awards.
• Elite list of Unicorns in India 2021 by Tracxn.
• Next Hottest Product by Amplitude Award.
CoinDCX- LayOffs
According to reports, CoinDcx has decided to direct the company’s growth in the direction of profitability and sustainability; they have let go of 12% (or about 70 employees) of the total workforce. According to Sumit Gupta, CEO of CoinDcx, “…Today, some of our incredibly talented team members will be parting ways with the organization. We are deeply sorry for that and we want to share our thoughts and reasons for the same,”.
Additionally, he added, “As you all know, startups and businesses globally are going through challenging times due to tough macro conditions, more so in crypto because of the prolonged bear market and impact of TDS on domestic exchanges. These factors had a significant impact on our volumes and thus revenues. To adapt, we undertook several proactive measures, including direct cost optimization and investment in automation to drive efficiency and productivity”
CoinDcx underwent internal reorganisation earlier in January, but it denied that any employees were laid off as a result of the process.
CoinDCX – Challenges Faced
CoinDCX was launched in 2018, and in the same year, RBI announced a banking ban on the transactions of cryptocurrencies. This ensured the shutdown of cryptocurrency startups in many parts of India, however, CoinDCX was one of the exceptional players who contested this ban, which finally, in March 2020, was invalidated by the Supreme Court of India. This lifting of the ban helped CoinDCX grow its user base from 150K to 400K investors on its exchange.
As the price of Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, dropped dramatically to a multi-month low, Indian cryptocurrency exchanges WazirX and CoinDCX experienced hour-long outages. Bitcoin’s price fell 30% in a few hours to $31,000 on May 19th, 2021. Many investors tried to sell their crypto assets to prevent large losses when the price fell, but they were unable to do so because WazirX and CoinDCX’s servers crashed, denying those trades.
Other investors attempted to purchase cryptocurrencies when the price was low, but their purchases were unsuccessful, resulting in a loss of valuable time before Bitcoin’s price rebounded to $40,000. Several investors converted their cryptocurrencies to Indian rupees and requested withdrawals, but stated that the funds were withdrawn from their crypto wallets but not reflected in their bank accounts.
Due to high user traffic we are aware some of our users like yourself might be experiencing issues related to services on our website and our Apps.
We are thankful for your patience and regret any inconvenience this may cause to you.https://t.co/W6oS8yz55v
— CoinDCX: Making Crypto Accessible to Indians (@CoinDCX) May 19, 2021
Following an informal advisory from the Reserve Bank of India, many Indian banks have stopped providing services to Indian crypto companies (RBI). Despite the Supreme Court’s decision in March 2020 to overturn the RBI’s 2018 circular prohibiting banks from offering services to crypto exchanges, this is still the case.
The current accounts of crypto companies have been suspended by ICICI Bank, one of the last few large lenders to provide services to them. Payment gateways for merchants buying or selling cryptocurrencies have reportedly been told by the private sector lender to turn off its net banking services.
CoinDCX was Questioned by ED in Relation to FEMA
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been working on an ongoing Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) to verify whether or not the Indian cryptocurrency companies are engaged in foreign currency offences. CoinSwitch Kuber has also been notified by ED in relation to the same. The ED has already questioned Sumit Gupta, the founder of CoinDCX, at its headquarters in Bengaluru. His statements were also videotaped, as far as the reports go.
Aims to get 50 million Indians into the cryptocurrency bandwagon this year.
Aims for widespread adoption among new crypto enthusiasts, especially millennials and Generation Z.
Strives to spread awareness about cryptocurrencies.
Looks forward to improve the company’s existing array of products.
Aims to strengthen customer retention campaigns.
Speaking from a development perspective of the app, Neeraj Khandelwal, Co-founder, CoinDCX said, “Most of the app users are in the age group 22 to 45. This app has been introduced to serve a simple purpose; remove the fear of technology, make the market numbers more understandable and provide the ability to make informed decisions in the crypto universe. A smart investor will regularly invest at least 1 percent of his disposable income for Bitcoins in his investment portfolio. People having faith in the future of technology should do the same. The app just makes the induction easy. Buying Bitcoin on CoinDCX Go will be as easy as using any of the popular apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Amazon, or booking your cab through Uber.”
The company invested $1.3 million in TryCrypto, its own project aimed at making blockchain and cryptocurrency more available to mainstream consumers, in yet another effort to accelerate mass acceptance of cryptocurrencies.
FAQs
How does CoinDCX work? What does it do?
CoinDCX is a platform that allows users to legally exchange various cryptocurrencies. It is built for all types of traders, taking into account their trading background, risk tolerance, and trading frequency, allowing customers to trade their crypto assets according to their requirements.
Who founded CoinDCX?
CoinDCX was founded by Sumit Gupta and Neeraj Khandelwal in March 2018.
Which companies do CoinDCX compete with?
Top Competitors of CoinDCX are UPHOLD, Binance, Coinbase, Poloniex, LocalBitcoins, HitBTC, Kucoin, C-Cex, Bitso, and WazirX.
How does CoinDCX make money?
Deposit fees (charged on exchanging currencies), withdrawal fees, trading commissions (0.01 percent of the overall transaction is normal on any exchange), and listing fees are how CoinDCX makes money, just like any other cryptocurrency exchange.
How is the CoinDCX funding?
CoinDCX funding is impressive. In fact, CoinDCX is also hailed as the only crypto startup in India to have raised three funding rounds in less than a year.
What is the CoinDCX transaction fees?
If you are wondering about the CoinDCX transaction fees, then you need to know that CoinDCX charges 0.10% commission from both the takers and makers.
Unbeknownst, the falling Indian currency 78 INR mark rate against the US dollar for the first time helped Indian marketers, that is, somehow created a smooth way to one step ahead in achieving the fifth-largest economy in India.
As we know to excel in the business challenges, startups must take necessary actions in evolving tech, a shift in consumer preferences by adopting new product strategies, and frame objectives according to economic policies.
Some Indian unicorns overcame the following challenges as they introduced indulgent, efficient, and customer-centric products. In this regard, India ranks as the third largest unicorn-producing country in the world, with 106 unicorns competing against the USA and China.
Indian Cities With Their Unicorn Count: A Total of 106 Unicorns
According to IMF sources, India has surpassed the UK in the final three months of 2021 to become the world’s 5th largest economy, following the USA, China, Japan, and Germany in 2022.
Known for being the key pillar of the Indian economy, India’s startup ecosystem is a kick start to GDP growth, whereby the country achieved the milestone of 100 unicorns in May 2022.
The above graph shows the countries with the maximum number of unicorns (2022) as per the data shown by Google
Bangalore
We immediately conjure up an image of the country’s IT hub whenever we hear “Bangalore”, don’t we? Bangalore, as we all know, is a happening city in India with many tech-based companies and growing career opportunities. Bangalore is home to 43 unicorns out of 106 in India.
The city has a nurturing ecosystem that is known for its IT sector and ability to build top tech brands. By leveraging talented fellows, adopting cutting-edge technology, connecting with opulent inventors, and collaborating with multinational R&D centers.
Thereby, established top-most brands in achieving the $1 Billion mark within a short span and ultimately contributed 37% of unicorns of the nation in terms of leading sectors as Fintech 20% and SaaS 12% contribution of unicorns. Bangalore has earned the title of the top city in India for producing unicorns across industries like e-commerce, logistics, and ed-tech.
In no doubt, Mumbai has earned the deserving title of ‘the city of dreams, a place where many entrepreneurs have started their careers. As is the case, Mumbai is the richest city in the country with a homeland of 72 billionaires living and contributing $310 Billion toward the GDP of the country.
It accounts for more than 70% of unicorns in Delhi, as they are based in the Gurgaon region. The city has opened various portals for opportunities. Second-largest information technology hub and third-largest financial hub in India, Gurgaon is home to a slew of multinational corporations.
Since it houses top IT companies and fortune 500 companies, the city has been nicknamed ‘Cyber city’. With 13% of the total unicorn percentage in India, Gurgaon stands third in unicorn production.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
Oxyzo
Fintech
2016
2022
Mamaearth
E-commerce Personal Care
2016
2021
Spinny
Automotive
2015
2021
Mobikwik
Fintech
2009
2021
OfBusiness
Building Materials
2015
2021
Droom
Marketplace- Automotives
2014
2021
BlinKit
E-commerce- Groceries
2013
2021
Urban Company
Home Services
2014
2021
CARS24
B2C E-commerce
2015
2020
OYO
Hospitality
2013
2018
Rivigo
Logistics
2014
2019
PolicyBazaar
Insurance company
2008
2018
Zomato
Foodtech
2008
2015
Tata 1mg
HealthTech
2015
2022
MakeMyTrip
Online Travel
2000
2010
ReNew Power
Renewable Energy
2011
2017
Pristyn Care
Healthtech
2018
2021
New Delhi
New Delhi is not only the capital of India but lately, reformed into a new startup capital of India. Moreover, India will become the 3rd biggest economy in the world in 2022, and Delhi has become a hotspot for several startups and unicorns around India as well.
Gurgaon and Noida are the most prominent hotspots. Delhi is now home to 10 unicorns, with an estimation of roughly 1 billion dollars. And as of 2022, Delhi-NCR has a market worth 46 to 56 million dollars. Moreover, Delhi is reported to have the most Indian unicorns in a short span, and its startup ecosystem is growing exponentially.
Approximately 12,000 startups, 30 unicorns, and a cumulative valuation of about $150 billion could be based in Delhi-NCR by 2025, making it one of the top 5 global startup hubs. Delhi NCR contributes roughly 6.6% to the Indian unicorns.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
BharatPe
Fintech Payments
2018
2021
Delhivery
E-commerce Logistics Services
2011
2019
Lenskart
E-commerce- Eyewear
2010
2019
ShipRocket
eCommerce shipping
2017
2022
GlobalBees
E-commerce Retail
2021
2021
Pune
One fine feature in unicorns at Pune is women leading the start-up culture. Pune has 3200 Startups, on the other hand, Mumbai has 3274 Startups, which may compete against each other in the future in a healthy way.
Moreover, the Sci-Tech Park (established by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, and the University of Pune in 1986) alone has 153 startups.
As a result of Pune’s exceptional position to support start-ups and its proximity to industry, IT, and the best academic institutions, international collaboration among start-ups has increased over the past few years. Pune’s contribution to unicorns is approximately 5.7% as of a recent survey.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
ElasticRun
E-commerce Logistics
2015
2022
XpressBees Logistics
E-commerce Logistics
2015
2022
FirstCry
E-commerce
2010
2020
Icertis
Saas- Contract Management
2009
2019
Druva Software
Saas- Data Management
2008
2019
OneCard
Fintech
2018
2022
MindTickle
Saas- Enterprise Software
2011
2021
Chennai
Since Chennai city has failed to invest enough in startups in the last ten years, speed has finally picked up now, with a new administration in place. In a recent study, Tamil Nadu has a well-rounded business ecosystem spanning sectors, particularly in the industrialization sector.
However, compared to Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi, it still struggles to fit in. Moreover, several experts are believed to turn Chennai from Tamil Nadu into i-Tamil Nadu Technology, a hub for technology and a better startup ecosystem. Chennai as well pitches in 6.7% of the Indian unicorn sectors to the economy.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
Five Star Business Finance
Financial Services
1984
2021
Uniphore Software Systems
SaaS- Conversational Automation
2008
2022
CredAvenue/ Yubi
Fintech
2017
2022
ChargeBee
Financial Services
2011
2021
Freshworks
SaaS – CRM
2010
2018
The above graph shows the aggregate value of Indian Unicorns in Billion US Dollars as per the source Iron Pillar India Tech Trends Volume IV Report
Noida
In addition to Delhi, Noida has also bagged the title of a prosperous startup hub. The city is now a gateway for various global corporations. The city might be from Uttar Pradesh but emerged just like Delhi NCR when it comes to an industrial and manufacturing hub.
Noida has wide roads, and expressways in addition to greeneries, and for this reason, Noida is at present an up-and-coming city with an impressive startup ecosystem.
Moreover, it is near the Industrial Development Authority, Delhi, which makes good connectivity to the capital city, access to profitable talent, and cost-effective operations. Meanwhile, Noida extends 3.8% of the Indian unicorn sector’s income to the economy.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
Moglix
B2B E-commerce
2015
2021
PhysicsWallah
Edtech
2016
2022
Pine Labs
Fintech
1998
2020
Paytm
E-commerce Finance
2010
2015
Paytm Mall
E-commerce
2017
2018
Hyderabad
When there is a discussion about startup cities, Hyderabad also needs to be mentioned. Even though not many of the startups have turned into unicorns here, the number of budding startups here is quite high.
In the span of 3 years, from 2019 to 2021, approximately 933 startups were created here. It is not wrong to estimate that some of the smartest startups have been based in Hyderabad. And when it comes to unicorn startups, Hyderabad is home to 3 unicorns in India.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
Darwinbox
SaaS- HR
2015
2022
Highradius
Fintech
2006
2020
Zenoti
Saas- Spa and Salon Services
2010
2020
The above graph shows the percentage of Indian Unicorns based on the different geography as per Iron Pillar India Tech Trends Volume IV Report
Goa
Goa is highly acknowledged for its natural component. However, the government there is keen on making it a startup destination across India. Undoubtedly, Goa is home to many small and large startup businesses. Apart from that, Goa is also home to health based unicorn startup named Molbio Diagnostic.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
Molbio Diagnostic
HealthTech
2010
2022
Jaipur
The Pink city of India also provides a suitable culture for numerous startups to grow in it. The Ecosystem of Jaipur Startups is ranked at 7th position in India and 212th position globally. Jaipur is now home to one Indian Unicorn company and has many more coming in the future.
Startup Name
Industry
Founding Year
Unicorn Entry Year
CarDekho
E-commerce Automotives
2007
2021
Conclusion
On the whole, India has over 106 unicorns, all segregated in cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon, Noida, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Goa, and Mumbai. So far, India has globally earned recognition for its unicorns, and this may be one of the reasons why India is ranked third in the world economy.
FAQs
Which Indian state has the most unicorns?
Karnataka is home to the maximum number of unicorns.
Which city has the most unicorns?
Bengaluru has the most number of unicorns.
Which country has the most unicorns?
The United States has the highest number of unicorns in the world with a tally of 865 unicorns followed by China with an account of 224 unicorns.
Which is India’s 100th unicorn?
The 100th unicorn of India is a neo-banking platform named “Open”.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Symbo.
India is the second-largest insurance technology market in Asia-Pacific. Through technology, the insurance industry is revolutionized to a great extent. Indian customers are inclined toward tech-enabled services as it makes the process easier and more accessible. With the main insurance sectors being life insurance, health insurance, property insurance, and commercial insurance, insurance companies are innovating their services. Symbo is an insurtech startup that provides insurance covers for different businesses. Their newly launched insurance services are eyewear insurance, footwear insurance, and even fitness insurance.
Read the success story of Symbo, its founders, business model, insurance services, funding, and their marketing strategy.
Symbo is a leading embedded insurtech platform that enables any business to offer customized insurance and protection plans to their customers, right at the point of purchase. Its vision and mission are to be the world’s largest embedded insurance distribution platform providing best-in-class claims, consulting, and buying experiences to its customers and partners.
Insurance has always been a product that has been “sold” and not bought by the customer. However, they strongly believe that if you offer relevant coverage to the user in a contextual setting, the adoption of insurance will increase. They want to be the company that offers these innovative and relevant insurance products, with a very seamless and frictionless buying experience.
The core belief of the team is that insurance penetration can increase in a market like India if customers can experience the benefits of insurance at a smaller ticket size. An embedded distribution model can take this approach to masses.
Symbo – Industry
The global InsurTech market size is valued at $9.4bn as of 2020. India is the second-largest insurance technology market in Asia-Pacific and including Symbo, India has at least 66 insurtech companies accounting for 35% of the $3.66 billion in insurtech-focused venture capital invested in the APAC region.
According to a recent survey of 500+ bank customers in India from SurveyMonkey, 91% of Indian digital bank customers would be highly interested in receiving embedded insurance offers based on their transaction data, as would 95% of traditional bank customers. ‘Convenience’ is the primary driver for their interest, stated by 63%. This stands as a testimony that Indian customers are welcoming embedded insurance and the industry has a major shift toward the tech side of it while making the process of Insurance even easier and more accessible to all. It will not be long before all insurance companies will start going digital and get into the Insurtech space that Symbo is in today. While the space and services will go digital, they will also evolve drastically in their technology capabilities that will be used even 5 years from now. It is safe to say that there might be a time when Insurance of any kind will be available online and the customers will not have to worry about filling out cumbersome paperwork for the same. The next couple of years is going to be very intriguing to look forward to and see how fast this digitally driven world will change the insurance space in the best way possible.
Symbo – Founders and Team
Anik Jain, Mitesh Jain, and Adrit Raha are the founders of Symbo.
Anik Jain
He is the CEO & Co-founder of Symbo. He has 17 + years of experience working in various fields. He also has experience in leading business units at various levels like start-ups, changes management in a mature organization. He also tends to specialize in the areas of strategy, change management, P&L responsibility, insurance, team management, channel management, business development B2B, broking and sales.
Mitesh Jain
He is a CTO & Co-founder and is an Experienced Founder with a demonstrated history of working in Technology Consulting and product management. He is also an Entrepreneur with experience in incubating business initiatives, evangelizing stakeholders, influencing industry thinking, and launching and scaling up products to deliver strong business impact. He also has Strong experience in solving large-scale problems in a complex regulatory environment through deep product thinking and focus on impact.
Adrit Raha
As a Co-Founder & Co-CEO, he has shared responsibility for overseeing all aspects of the business – from the company’s mission, vision and goals to setting strategy, and direction, and, most significantly, managing my super talented troupe. He is of the strong belief that technology, platforms and protection (be it health or insurance) have, is, and will always continue to evolve, and it so happens that tech innovation is the current now. Hence – Symbo
Symbo has 100+ employees giving out their best services
Symbo – The Idea and Startup Story
Symbo was founded in 2017 with a focus on context-based, need-focused insurance that aims to help customers buy insurance covers based on their personalized needs. During the initial years, they tried to solve the problem of insurance distribution via multiple mechanisms because their vision was always to make insurance accessible to the masses. At one point they had an agent network of 1000s of agents who were using Symbo’s technology platform to distribute insurance.
One such mechanism they experimented with was embedded insurance. They worked closely with an initial set of partners to understand what kind of risks and issues their customers are facing and they co-created unique insurance products for them.
Some of the categories they launched were eyewear insurance, footwear insurance, and even fitness insurance. The customer response to these products was extremely encouraging prompting them to double down on the embedded distribution.
As of today, Symbo has over 30+ insurance partners and over 30 insurance products which are being distributed via partners.
Symbo – Services
Symbo works with partners across e-commerce, retail, fintech, and other categories. By integrating Symbo’s powerful Covergateway API, a business can instantly start offering insurance products to their customers, right at the point of purchase.
The API issues policies in real-time and Symbo has deep integrations with leading insurers in India. The entire buying journey for the users is very seamless, they can choose to purchase the coverage for the product they are buying with a simple opt-in. The claims are also handled in a digital-first way. Customers need to just upload their policy details and photographs and within 48 hours, Symbo’s claim specialists review the claims.
Their USP is that they give customized embedded insurance to the customers according to their needs, and providing API to other businesses not only benefits their customers but the online sellers as well. With a simple opt-in in the purchase journey, consumers can insure the product they are buying against common issues like accidental damage, theft, etc which standard warranties might not cover. The insurance coverage is powered by leading insurers in India and some of their largest partners include Lenskart, Bata, and Decathlon, among others.
While Symbo’s core vision was always to make insurance accessible by innovative distribution methods, Symbo pivoted from an agent-first business model (POSP) to an embedded distribution platform in the last year. The Symbo is a part of Symbo Platforms Pte, which also runs an Enterprise SAAS platform for insurance companies to manage their distribution.
Symbo – Business Model and Revenue Model
Being a platform business, Symbo’s business model is to enable distribution along with its partners and monetize by having a share in every transaction.
SAAS Platform
Insurance companies buy their product to enable capabilities for themselves to have a fleet of insurance agents at their fingertips who are accompanied by a dashboard. This product acts as a centralized tool with tons of features to make the insurance journey better for agents, buyers, and companies. As an InsurTech company, all Symbo wants to do is make insurance better by implementing automation in the tool. This entire stack has all the capabilities and features that companies would want for example monthly subscription, data, analytics, reports, super-admin, 5-level user roles, agent onboarding, and state-of-the-art UI. They have crossed $1M in this line of business.
Embedded
This is the heart and soul of Symbo. In this model, they sell $1.5 per policy (which is their average order value) contributing to their overall GWP. Part of this is sent to the Insurer to the onboard partner and they take a certain revenue share out of this as Monthly Recurring Revenue. Currently, they have 10 partners onboarded with them with around 150k policies solder per month.
Symbo – Customer Acquisition
In the early days of Symbo’s embedded business, they used to spend time at the store understanding customers’ buying behaviour. They worked with the brands to learn about the top reasons their customers were unhappy and created coverage plans that were relevant to the brand’s customers.
They spoke to as many customers as possible during their store visit and explained to them the benefits of insurance and started to sell the initial set of policies.
A lot of their learnings during the initial days of their field visit came to use as they started to scale. They spent a lot of time with store managers and staff to train them on how to sell Symbo’s products. Their marketing collaterals are designed to keep the end customer in mind.
Pivots are always challenging. As they moved from a traditional broker to a technology-first insurtech platform, they had to build the product to support the new use cases, at scale. Since they enable sales of insurance within the partner’s point of sale, they had to build the right integrations and user journeys to ensure the purchase journey is seamless for the user.
Their relationships with insurer partners were one key element that helped them execute the pivot smoothly. They had tremendous support from all the insurers for them to become an embedded insurtech platform, right from the product they wanted to enable integrations with their systems.
It is hard to market a product that lacks quality and easy for products that shine bright with quality. They knew that they have the best technology for embedding insurance be it any way possible – standee QR code or website integration. And with that, they needed to market strongly.
The moment they received a few references from their clients they immediately knew they are marketing it right. The joy of achieving successful word-of-mouth in the days of the Internet is as overwhelming as getting ample leads with low costing clicks as they have been doing before. However, they think there is still a long way to go.
Symbo – Marketing Strategy
They invite you to have a look at the Kanban board at their office where they have brainstormed many marketing campaigns and PR ideas. They have sufficient ideas with them (inside the Insurance sector itself) to create an ever-lasting dent within the subconscious of the masses. They have not set out any campaigns right now as they have kept them occupied with digital advertisements on different platforms. They will be capitalizing on our data and coming out “strong and viral” with their campaigns very soon.
Symbo – Growth
The embedded insurance business is focused on India, while the SAAS platform business has customers across Southeast Asia.
Some of their notable insurer partners are:
Reliance General Insurance
TATA AIG Insurance
HDFC ERGO
Max Bupa Health Insurance
BAJAJ Allianz
Religare
The list of distribution partners continues to grow with brands like Lenskart, Red tape, and Decathlon being some of their key relationships. With over 2M policies issued, they are growing over 30% MoM.
The plan for the next 2 years is to be able to provide customized embedded insurance in as many spaces as it is possible for us. Like most high-growth startups they are in talks with a bunch of investors and would bring in the right strategic partner who can help them fuel the business expansion.
Symbo – Funding
Symbo has raised a funding of $9.4 Million in March 2021.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
March 2021
Series A
$9.4 Million
Led by CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund and San-Francisco-based investment firm. Think Investments, with participation from existing investors Integra Partners, Insignia Ventures, and AJ Capital
Symbo – Advisors and Mentors
Mr Sanjeev Jha has been their mentor. He has worked, and had experience, across geographies including India, the Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia, Europe and North America. He has been an advisory board member for Symbo for a year now. Apart from Symbo, he is also an advisory board member for many other companies.
They use all the white-label assets and make full use of open source tools and data available and give due credits wherever required.
Symbo – Recognition and Achievements
Symbo has been awarded the “Digital Insurance Innovation” of the year award from ET BFSI at the World BFSI Congress and Awards 2020.
The startup has also wonthe “Digital-Insurance Broker” award at SBR Technology Excellence Awards in the year 2020.
Symbo – Future Plans
At this point, they are focused on growing their partner base and growing the number of policies. Having seen some of their initial categories like eyewear, and footwear scale, they are working with the insurer to make the program and coverage a lot more exciting for the customers as well as introduce newer categories.
FAQs
Who is the founder of Symbo?
Anik Jain, Mitesh Jain, and Adrit Raha are the founders of Symbo.
When was Symbo founded?
Symbo was founded in 2017.
What are the services offered by Symbo?
Symbo provides embedded insurance for different Businesses.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved byuKnowva.
Be it a small, medium scale, or large organization, all types of businesses need HRMS software to manage their workforce efficiently. HRMS facilitates employee satisfaction and productivity and helps the Human Resource department with all the employee details and their activity tracks. As entrepreneurship is evolving with advancements in technology, the need for HRMS software is also increasing. Human Resources Management Software (HRMS) Market is estimated to hit 33.57 Billion by 2030. Different Businesses need different software to manage, develop and engage their workforce. uKnowva HRMS provides a holistic HRMS to systematically acquire, manage, develop, and engage your employees. It has all the advanced features like dashboard and analytics, E-recruitment, automated payroll & appraisal management, and more. It can be fully customized according to your business needs.
Read the startup story of uKnowva, its founders, product, growth, and more about it.
uKnowva is a cloud-based HRMS that offers a secure and private platform to employees for engaging in seamless communication and networking, knowledge-sharing and utilising the capabilities of high-yielding tools to attain increased productivity and accelerated growth.
Their vision is to become the world’s SMARTEST HR platform. SMART means 360 degree HRMS software that is easy to use and administer, cost-effective and highly intelligent.
There are nearly 3 billion employees/workers across the globe as per the World Bank Data, which makes the overall market size to be around 24 billion USD per year. The HRMS market is gaining significant traction. HRMS provides digital solutions to manage human and material resources with versatility. Using HRMS results in increased efficiency through minimal errors due to automation of manual HR activities and assists HR departments to analyze the organization’s operational trends. Also, the rapidly evolving IoT and wireless technology have a positive impact on the market value. According to a report by Market Research Future (MRFR), the HRMS market is forecasted to reach USD 33.57 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 12.2%.
Additionally, the cloud-based HRMS segment is anticipated to gain more traction during the forecast period.
Vicky Jain, Priyanka Jain, and Abhay Talekar have founded uKnowva in 2012.
After completing his engineering and MBA, Vicky Jain started to learn languages like Java, Oracle and Applets. It was when his cousin asked him to develop a certain software, life took him to a new course. His work was well appreciated and he got a complete assignment to build a website for his cousin’s company. Vicky along with Priyanka Jain, who also completed her engineering at the same college, worked on this project. As work started to come in, they decided to set up a company, Convergence Services. Since they started off as a service company they had to go through numerous challenges while developing their first flagship product, uKnowva. Vicky, Priyanka and Abhay Talekar (also co-founder of Convergence Services) started uKnowva back in 2012. While they all have individual roles to play within the organisation, they all come together to make sure that the business operates smoothly. It takes plenty of time and energy to juggle everything involved. Startup founders need to be self-motivated to keep up with the challenges at all times.
uKnowva – The Idea and Startup Story
uKnowva initially started off as a web development company. They created a few tools for better collaboration and people management, internally. When some customers approached them with similar requirements, they came to realize that this could be developed as a product and offered to consumers. They then tweaked some of its features and gave it to a few customers like Prime focus technologies, Capital first, etc., and the response was awesome. That gave them the confidence to take this initiative to a whole new level to develop uKnowva HRMS.
uKnowva – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Vicky Jain and Priyanka were in Lonavala, Maharashtra just brainstorming on the ideas to keep an apt name for the start-up. Their main objective was to have the letters U, V and W in the name as some renowned numerologists had suggested keeping U, V and W in the startup name to attract good growth. And after hours of brainstorming, they decided upon the name uKnowva. The logo was designed by Priyanka who is the creative director and the tagline of extending collaboration was adopted over a period of time.
uKnowva – Product
uKnowva HRMS
uKnowva HRMS has every core component of Human Resource Management starting from an employee directory to a self-service portal to automated payroll to leave management and work reports to a special disability feature to virtual biometrics and much more that employees and HRs love to use. By adopting uKnowva’s HRMS, one can step up productivity and manage everyday activities much more efficiently. The Employee Payroll system automatically calculates salary from the data available i.e. leaves, investment declarations, holidays, tax deductions etc. Virtual attendance management allows employees to punch in and out from any device. Also, uKnowva is the first HR tech company in India to launch the disability feature within uKnowva HRMS for visually challenged employees.
Easy to use, Cost-effective, Intelligent and Flexible are some of the major USPs of their product. In general, cloud-based HRMS are developed to be intuitive and user-friendly to those who need to access or use them. That’s why uKnowva’s HRMS has been designed keeping the end-user in mind, based on the requests/suggestions of real HR and payroll administrators.
Our’s is a SaaS based product and the pricing model is simple with per user per month pricing, which starts at USD 2 per user per month.
uKnowva – Customer Acquisition
uKnowva had a few customers who appreciated uKnowva product and the word of mouth also proved to be beneficial. They tried to onboard their existing customers initially. Other than that, they focused their efforts on building their website and enhanced their SEO efforts to reach out to more customers. This significantly helped them to expand their customer base and strengthen their efforts to maintain business continuity.
Over the years, while they have invested in increasing their reach and making more businesses aware of what they do and how uKnowva can help, a good product and support system has helped them retain their customers. So far, attracting new customers has worked best via referral channels.
uKnowva – Challenges Faced
While they were transforming from a “Service” company to a “Product” company, the major challenge was changing the mindset of the people involved. Initially it was like they visited the customers and asked them about their requirements and then built a product based on their needs or preferences. But, while transforming into a “product” company, things changed completely as they needed to ask themselves what would customers need and then build it and sell it to the customers. This entire process actually involved a change in the mindset of the entire team which was the biggest challenge. They overcame it through regular sessions with the team and made them understand how to think like a product owner.
uKnowva – Marketing
When it comes to content and social media, their main focus is on brand awareness and organic visibility. uKnowva is mostly active on Linkedin and they don’t promote and/or boost their posts or campaigns as such. It’s all organic and for brand awareness predominantly.
They had done a campaign called #InsideuKnowva where they introduced relevant topical memes featuring Shark Tank India. The memes garnered good impressions.
Also on Quora, they have crossed 65,000 views within a span of 2 months. Their polls do extremely well and garner good impressions on LinkedIn.
uKnowva – Growth
As technology continues to be at the forefront of a transforming business environment, there are vast opportunities for growth for HR tech companies. So far, their journey has been satisfactory and uKnowva is doing pretty well in terms of growth, innovation, and extending its footprint. They have more than 75+ customers with a doubling ARR per year. uKnowva is all set for further developments in the future.
These are the people who mentor/advise the startup:
Ganesh Sankaran: COO and Business Head-WUBS & New Initiatives at Weizmann Forex Ltd
Deepak Agarwal: Cofounder and CEO at TurboHire
Krishna Kabra: Head of Major Service Center, Orange Business Services
Ranu Parwal: COO & Business Head at Weizmann Forex Ltd.
uKnowva – Acquisitions
uKnowva acquired a company called Apptroid which is a digital agency helping businesses of all size get a better return from online activities like Website Design, Mobile Apps Development , SEO, etc.
uKnowva – Competitors
Following are some of the top competitors of uKnowva:
uKnowva recently received the “Entrepreneurial Company of the Year” award from Frost & Sullivan. The award recognises the efforts in keeping growth and innovation at the forefront of their vision while effectively addressing upcoming new opportunities and challenges for their business. In the Product Excellence Matrix Report in 2014 by Nasscom in association with Frost and Sullivan, uKnowva was featured in the “Unified Communication And Collaboration” category.
uKnowva – Future Plans
Currently, they are focused on increasing its footprints in India and the MENA region. The MENA region has huge potential for Indian technology start-ups as the region has a highly diverse, tech-savvy and distributed workforce whose priorities are flexibility and ease of access in their flow of work. The countries they are basically targeting include KSA, UAE, and Egypt to start and then we’ll cover the complete gulf region. Few customers they have onboarded in the MENA region are Ravin, Masdar, Khansaheb, Puregroup, etc.
FAQs
Who is the founder of uKnowva?
Vicky Jain, Priyanka Jain, and Abhay Talekar are the founders of uKnowva.
When was uKnowva founded?
uKnowva was founded in 2012.
What is uKnowva HRMS?
uKnowva HRMS is Human Resource Management tool that offers employee directory, automated payroll, leave management, work reports, and more employee management features.
