Mumbai-based 9Unicorns emerges as an aggressive startup accelerator with 32 deals in its first year

India has witnessed the birth of many startup accelerators and incubators in the last few years, but the one which has emerged as the fastest growing and most aggressive player, with 32 deals in its first year of operations, has been Mumbai-based 9Unicorns. It’s a Rs 300 crore, sector-agnostic fund from the stable of Venture Catalysts (VCats), India’s leading integrated incubator. In 2020, its maiden year of operations, 9Unicorns has invested in nearly three startups on average every month. And this despite 90 applications per selection being rejected due to a stringent selection process which ensures excellence.

Some of its investees — Janani AI , Toch and Qin1 — have already advanced to raise next rounds at significantly higher valuations within six months of investment. It has also invested in sectors such as DeepTech, B2B SaaS, Media, FM CG, FinTech, InsureTech, HealthTech and EduTech.

On their potential for investing and creating high growth companies, Abhijeet Pai, partner at 9Unicorns, said, “The world we live in has necessitated the adoption of technology. At 9Unicorns, we endeavour to bring about a tectonic shift in idea/early stage investing and hope to demonstrate long-term value creation and disruption. We believe India will showcase a number of wealth creators in the years to come, at par with the best globally.”


About 9Unicorns
9Unicorns is backed by several well-known global LP s from across 10 countries, family offices of large organisations such as the OP G Group, MBG Group, Qualcon International, UB Cotton, along with top executives from SAP , LinkedIn, Quest Global, AB InBev, Fujitsu, etc.

Of late, it has been aggressively working towards investing in the startup ecosystem in smaller Indian towns and cities, which are emerging as hotbeds of innovation on the back of increased awareness, better internet connectivity and rising consumerism. The idea is to mentor and help idea-stage startups founded outside metropolitan cities in their journey to become the next unicorns.

9Unicorns’s strength and focus is to provide a hands-on support ecosystem for startups beyond just capital. Besides investment, 9Unicorns also opens doors to the startups for access to a wide network of successful founders, category-leaders, CXOs of large corporations, seasoned angel investors and partners of global VC funds. Every portfolio company receives acceleration support for three months and post-investment support for 18 months.

Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder, 9Unicorns , said , “Innovation and startups became mainstream in Silicon Val ley when early employees of first generation startups — Intel, Apple, Microsoft — became second and third generation entrepreneurs. In India, considering Flipkart as a first generation startup, we see the same explosive growth here as well. We have no shortage of entrepreneurs with grit, hustle, talent and ambition.”

There are over one lakh startups in India, with 40 unicorns. However, in 2020 itself, nine new unicorns were born. “As an accelerator, we are committed to boosting India’s startup ecosystem further and be instrumental in creating as many unicorns as possible. We believe that India can build over 200 unicorns from among half a million startups over the next four to five years. At 9Unicorns, we want to create a portfolio of 100 startups in the next 36 months,” Dr Sharma added.