A billion dollar valuation is not easy. You’d have read that in the last 10 years, the United States has seen 39 billion dollar companies. Even though India has a much smaller tech scene, there have been a few billion dollar start-ups in the last 10 few years. Basically, it takes longer to build billion dollar companies in India. But things aren’t as bad as the cynics make it out to be. Let’s take a look.
Flipkart
Flipkart, founded by Sachin & Binny Bansal raised $160 mn in its latest round of funding in October. At the time, the company was valued at over $1.6 bn. Flipkart is looking to clock $1 bn in gross sales by 2015.
Year of founding: 2007
Valuation: $1.6 bn in October 2013
Funds raised so far: > $500 mn
Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 4 years
Inmobi
Naveen Tewari and two others founded InMobi in 2007. The mobile ad network raised $200 mn from Japan’s Softbank at a valuation close to $1 bn.
Year of founding: 2007
Valuation: > $1 bn n 2012
Funds raised so far: $216 mn
Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 5 years
MuSigma
The big data company which has its delivery center in Bangalore and is headquartered in Chicago was founded by Dhiraj Rajaraman in 2004. Earlier this year, when Mastercard Advisors, a division of MasterCard acquired an equity stake in Mu Sigma, it was valued at over billion dollars.
Year of founding: 2004
Valuation: >$1 bn in Feb 2013
Funds raised so far: $108 mn in 2011
Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 9 years
Micromax
This homegrown cell phone brand is the second largest smartphone seller in India. which recently announced plans to go international is looking to clock more than $1bn in revenues in FY2014.
Year of founding: 1999
Valuation: ~ $1 bn in 2011
Funds raised so far: $45 mn in 2010, $10 mn in 2012
Time taken for billion dollar valuation: 12 years
JustDial
VSS Mani founded the company with Rs 50,000 in seed capital. The local search engine, which helps people find services with the help of telephones, mobile phones and the Internet now has a market cap of over a billion dollars. It went public in May 2013.
Year of founding: 1996
Market Cap: ~ $1.2 bn in 2013
Time taken to IPO: 17 years
New & Upcoming
Zomato
The restaurant search service Zomato was founded by Deepinder Goyal. At current run rate, it is expected to generate nearly Rs 40 cr in revenues this year. The company is expanding in international markets and is looking to take on Yelp!
Year of founding: 2008
Valuation: $161 mn in October 2013
Funds Raised so far: $53 mn
There is talk that if there are no more big exits in the next 2-3 years, funds might pull out of India. [tweet this]
But really, is it that bad? Alok Mittal, the Managing Director of VC firm Canaan Partners says:
Three years back it would have been hard to guess that any of these could be a billion dollar company so soon. This momentum of companies getting to that scale would suggest that we should see several other companies get to that milestone in next five years. How many, is anyone’s guess.
One is likely to see billion dollar companies in the payments, travel and auto segment.
Besides Flipkart, there will be 2 or 3 more e-commerce companies who will get to a billion $ in valuation, says Deepak Srinath of Allegro Capital. “Perhaps Snapdeal and one of the vertical players,” he said.
There could also be a couple of enterprise product companies that reach the mark, Srinath added.
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