Yes ! This may sound like a fairytale but it’s not ! Unicorn in 46 days ? What are you saying ? A few things go faster than we can imagine the events to roll up, while others may go unexpected each time, take an unfortunate turn and even ruin the business idea and consequently the entrepreneur’s hope too.

People count the best. They remember the best, fastest and want to hear interesting stories. Who cares to hear about the world’s most off-track startup ? But, if you’re an entrepreneur, you must make the habit of reading and touching failures.

Here we talk about a startups that became the fastest unicorns in the world however.

Founded in 2012 by Al Goldstein, Paul Zhang, and John Sun, Chicago-based AI firm Avant is the fastest unicorn in the history of all unicorns. It took just one month and 16 days for the company to receive its billion-dollar valuation.

NuCom Group is the second speediest unicorn. Reaching a billion-dollar valuation in one month and 21 days, it missed out on the top spot by the tip of its horn.

The chasing pack, which includes iCarbonX and exclusive social media platform Clubhouse, took between five months to a year to achieve the mythical unicorn status.

These front-runners out-paced the average US-based unicorn by over half a decade. It took most US unicorns seven years, three months, and 13 days to hit the billion-dollar mark.

Anyone with ambitions to create their own unicorn should think about heading to Germany. Europe’s hotbed for innovation is the country with the fastest speeds from foundation to billion-dollar status. On average, it took German unicorns six years and nine months to prove just how special (and valuable) they really were.

Till September 2022, India has 107 unicorns. Interestingly, only 17 of these firms, which have potential to turn unicorns on the Hurun list, made profits in FY21, indicating that the vast majority of India’s future unicorns may have to subsidise their revenue by raising additional venture capital or private equity funds.

The time taken by Indian startups to touch the unicorn mark has reduced by almost a year to about 6.5 years now. The Indian government is supporting startups by framing favorable startup policies, creating inclusive environment, funding schemes both by central and state-level government bodies. Given the market, the huge population for a consumer size and the fast growing innovation, research and development in technology, agriculture, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Automation, Military & Defence, etc. India today, is the best place to begin a startup.

United States leads the Country Leaderboard with 865 Unicorns, that constitutes 53% of the total. China follows United States with 224 Unicorns, followed by India (107).

On an average, 7-10 unicorns are taking birth every year in India. The total valuation of all Indian unicorns combined is $340.79 billion as of today.

image source (Zen Business, CB Insights)

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