It's raining unicorns in India: Vani Kola's 4-role plan for a successful start-up, Oyo boss asks people to celebrate others' achievements

April has been a busy month for Indian start-ups. Ever since the start of the financial year, companies like Groww, CRED, Gupshup, ShareChat, Moj, among others, have entered the unicorn club, making 2021 the year of India.

Last month, Credit Suisse India, in a report, said that India is home to 100 unicorns across sectors which are collectively valued at over USD 240 billion. Soon after news of the new entrants started doing the rounds, many entrepreneurs-turned-investors took to Twitter to share their insights about successful companies.

Quoting a tweet by Navam Capital Managing Director Rajeev Mantri, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said it's India's time to shine with a number of start-ups joining the unicorn club. The venture capitalist's tweet showed a list of Indian start-ups that made it to the unicorns list in 2020 and 2021.



Deepinder Goyal, the founder of Zomato, congratulated all the new unicorns. The businessman is confident to see a new India 10 years from now. "I am confident that there will be more than 100 new unicorns coming out of India in the next couple of years", he wrote.


Kalaari Capital founder and Managing Director Vani Kola shared a four-point plan that can make any start-up successful. In a series of tweets, the 57-year-old venture capitalist said that a few roles must be clearly defined in a new company. "Start-ups are like a team sport, with distinct skills to play the game."

She said four roles can bring any organisation to success - Visionary, Doer, Innovator & Communicator.


While the visionary sets the direction for the start-up with a clear vision of the mission, the doer can translate the vision into go-to-market strategy and disciplined processes to build the business and the innovator can convert vision into product and make something outstanding, she wrote.

And last, but not the least, the communicator in in charge of convincing key stakeholders to believe in the vision. "As a founder, you will likely fit a combination of one or more of these roles. Never be afraid to be self-critical about what you lack. Bring people together who can complement you and fill the gaps," she explained.


Radhika Gupta, MD & CEO, Edelweiss Mutual Fund, in her tweet quoted the cockroach example. She referenced a tweet by businessman Sanjeev Bikhchandani which showed an inspirational quote by Bookmyshow co-founder Ashish Hemrajani. The quote read, "A unicorn is a f**king mythical animal. It doesn't exist. It's a horse with a horn and it's ugly. When I am asked whether Bookmyshow will ever be a unicorn, my response is that I don't know. But what I know for sure is that we are cockroaches. We are survivors, we can survive a nuclear holocaust - you put us in the microwave and we will make it. I couldn't care less about anything else."


Entrepreneur and designer Masaba Gupta, who has left her mark in the fashion industry, was also inspired by Hemrajani's cockroach theory.

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Riding the trend, Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal - who is relatively inactive on social media - decided to share his views on entrepreneurship. He said that most entrepreneurs continue working hard for the love of the game, and their only goal is getting better at it as they know they will never use the wealth they make. "Wealth is a means to keep score," he wrote.


Earlier this week, Ritesh Agarwal had addressed a piece of fake news doing the rounds that claimed Oyo has filed for bankruptcy. When his followers expressed disappointment over the misinformation, the Oyo founder said that it's time to change and celebrate others' success.

Asking people to celebrate new unicorns Cred, Meesho, Pharmeasy and Groww, Agarwal said, "I am sure in the years to come this will change and more will root for success of fellow entrepreneurs".


These unicorns, or startups valued at over $1 billion, are across industries, beyond technology and tech-enabled sectors as well, like pharmaceuticals, and consumer goods. From a geographical spread perspective, the unicorns are spread across the country with Bengaluru being the dominant hub and closely followed by Delhi NCR and Mumbai.

While two-thirds of these 100 unicorns came into being after 2005 and added that among the listed companies' universe, there are 336 scrips commanding a market capitalisation of over #1 billion.