Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Monday, August 22 instructed officials to identify a suitable place in the city to put up a Unicorn logo, aimed at highlighting Bengaluru for having the most number of startups and unicorns in the whole country. The design of the Unicorn logo structure is under progress by a financial solutions company, official sources said.
The structure that officials hope to be a major attraction in the city is likely to be put up at some place near Vidhana Soudha, the seat of the state legislature and secretariat, they said. Unicorns are companies with a valuation of USD 1 billion or more. India has seen a surge in the number of such startups in the last year and the country recently crossed 100 unicorns.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh recently said that India ranks third globally in the startup ecosystem and also in terms of number of unicorns, after the US and China, and that the country now has close to 49% of startups coming from the tier 2 and 3 cities.
These startups from smaller cities are working in fields like IT, agriculture, aviation, education, energy, health and space sectors, the Minister said while delivering a keynote address at "DST StartUp Utsav" in New Delhi.
As per the latest data, there are currently 105 unicorns, out of which 44 were born in 2021 and 19 in 2022.
"The decade 2021-30 is expected to bring transformational changes for Indian science, technology and innovation (STI)," said the Minister.
Dr Singh said that India in its 75th year of Independence is now home to as many as 75,000 startups.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi's special focus on science, technology and innovation has fired the imagination of the youth in the country to innovate and solve problems with new ideas," the Minister said.
"India ranks third among the most attractive investment destinations for technology transactions in the world as it has a strong focus on science and technology," he said, adding that the country is actively engaged in emerging technologies such as quantum technologies and Artificial Intelligence, etc.
India is also witnessing a boom in deeptech startups in niche areas like cybersecurity, quantum computing, AI and semiconductor, and the country is now home to more than 3,000 such startups that raised $2.7 billion in 2021 -- a 1.6 times growth over 2020 -- a new Nasscom report said on Monday.
The country added over 210 deeptech startups in 2021 alone, and Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR are leading them in the country, according to a Nasscom-Zinnov report.
"The Indian deeptech ecosystem has also fortified the job creation with over 4,000 people being employed across 14 potential deeptech unicorns and is expected to increase by 2X in headcount by 2026," said Debjani Ghosh, President, Nasscom.
The country is now home to 500 inventive deeptech startups, creating workforce across technologies such as drones, robotics, 3D printing and AI -- with the potential to develop new intellectual properties backed by scientific advances and fundamental research.
The deeptech ecosystem has grown at a staggering rate of 53% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in the last 10 years, growing at par with the Indian tech startups.
Nearly 70-75 per cent deeptech startups have at least 15 per cent of their workforce skilled in deep technologies, the report mentioned.
"Strategic partnership with the government, academia, global investors, streamlined corporate collaboration and dedicated test-bed programmes can create a massive impact on India's deeptech story," said Ghosh.