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Kunal Bahl, a celebrated entrepreneur and investor, on Tuesday asserted that India needs increasing number of Indicorns, perhaps in thousands, instead of a few hundred Unicorns. Speaking at the NDTV World Summit 2024, Bahl, co-founder of AceVector Limited, which is the holding company for Snapdeal, wandered why India is so obsessed with USD 1 billion company, a yardstick to accord Unicorn status. "Isn't it better we build businesses with the intention of making them lasting and enduring and aimed for goals which enable us to get there," Bahl said at a session titled 'Rise Of The Indicorns'.
The ace investor termed unicorn valuation of USD 1 billion, which comes to at about Rs 83,000 crore in Indian currency, as "mythical figure" and asserted "it doesn't make sense". He suggested that what India now needs is not a large pool of unicorns but thousands of Indicorns. "What India probably needs right now is not 100, 200, 300 unicorns or 500 unicorns, we need 10,000 Indicorns, because that will form the bedrock of the startup ecosystem. That will create a steady flow of companies that eventually listed companies and large businesses," Bahl said. According to market parlance, Indicorns are companies that generate over Rs 100 crore in revenue, and at the same time becoming a profitable entity. Bahl has invested and funded businesses that have over the time become unicorns. Unicorns are basically startups worth at least a billion dollars and not yet listed on a public exchange. India now has over a hundred unicorns. In India, startup as a word came into the common parlance only in recent years when Startup India initiative was launched by the Modi government, he said. Startup India is a flagship initiative launched by the Government of India in January, 2016 to build a strong eco-system for nurturing innovation and startups in the country which will drive economic growth and generate large scale employment opportunities. As on June 2024, DPIIT has recognized 140,803 entities as startups. Since the launch of Startup India initiative in 2016, the DPIIT-recognised startups have created over 15.53 lakh direct jobs. (ANI)
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