Kunal Bahl: India Needs 'Indicorns' Not Unicorns - PTI

New Delhi, Oct 22 (PTI) The term unicorn has emerged from the US, suited more to the American context, and India needs to celebrate 'Indicorns' with its own benchmarks of success and business goals tailored to the Indian context, Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl said on Tuesday.

Drawing attention to the rampant usage of the term 'unicorn' in the Indian venture capital industry, he said the world and India have been celebrating unicorns for many years now, but it's important to ask why this concept exists in the first place.

The term "unicorn" was created by a venture capitalist in the US to describe companies valued at over USD 1 billion -- "a mythical figure", the entrepreneur-turned-investor said.

"India's income levels have gone up. We are seeing companies become profitable in 2-3 years from the starting point. Then why is there an obsession with a currency that is not ours? An amount which is irrelevant in our context, like why Rs 8,300 crore (USD 1 billion)?" he said.

Rather, it is better to build businesses with the intention of making them lasting and enduring and aim for goals which enable us to get there, he added.

Reflecting on the evolution of the startup landscape in India, Bahl noted that just a decade ago, the ecosystem was nascent, with limited internet access and fewer entrepreneurial opportunities.

Today, with over a billion internet users and rising income levels, there is a pressing need for businesses that can generate real profits rather than merely chase valuations based on external currencies like dollars, he said.

"A Rs 100 crore revenue business which is profitable. Because the moment a company achieves Rs 100 crore in revenue and is profit-making, it's likely not going to go out of business, right?"

"What India needs right now is not 100- 500 unicorns. We need 10,000 Indicorns. Because that will form the bedrock of the startup ecosystem. And that will create the steady flow of companies that eventually become listed companies and large businesses," he said.

Speaking further, Bahl said with the advent of the 4G revolution in 2017, the usage of the internet and the number of internet users saw a dramatic surge, and there was an "explosion" in domestic opportunities.

"India has mouth-watering opportunities, but eye-watering challenges.

"Back then, the good thing was that there were fewer companies, so you could take your time to build something. But the bad thing was there weren't enough users, so you had to sort of slog it out for many years. Today, it's the inverse of that. There are lots of users, and there's disposable income, which is a lot higher. However, there is an insane amount of competition," he said.

Finding that little bit of courage to continue is what is needed, he said, stressing the importance of perseverance to be successful in entrepreneurship.

Bahl is a known name in the Indian startup ecosystem, co-founding Snapdeal, a major e-commerce platform. He also co-founded Titan Capital, a venture capital firm that supports early-stage startups.