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Today, let's talk about some of the fastest-growing companies in India and explore how businesses and entrepreneurs can capit

With a GDP of about 2.9 trillion USD and a population of over 1.3 billion, India is one of the most significant economies worldwide with a huge growth prospect.

Despite the damaging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which caused India’s economy to shrink by as much as 15%, the country is set to outshine leading economies across the world in the upcoming few years (1).

As per a report by Deloitte (2), as the economy started returning to normalcy, India is likely to witness double-digit growth in 2022. The report also noted that the liquidity measures of the RBI, Reserve Bank of India would boost the economy and rekindle sectors that had started going downwards following the pandemic.

In January 2021, a UK-based data analytics company, GlobalData (3), estimated that the country’s economy would grow 9.1% this year, ahead of all the major economies worldwide. The report added that the growth is driven by a massive increase in India’s FDI, foreign direct investments, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 266 billion USD stimulus packaging, and dropping coronavirus cases.

According to Insider Monkey, below are the top 15 emerging companies in India. Companies needed to top the following criteria to be included in the list (4):

  • Employment growth
  • Social impact
  • Funding and investment
  • Global footprint
India's Fastest Growing Companies

Today, let’s discuss some of the fastest-growing companies on the list and explore how businesses and entrepreneurs can capitalize on emerging trends.

LendingKart

LendingKart is an online financing company that offers short-term capital loans to SME debtors. Since its inception in 2014, this Ahmedabad, Gujarat-based fintech startup has secured more than 257.5 million USD in over twelve funding rounds, per Crunchbase data (5).

Lendingkart’s latest funding round was in early April this year when it secured over 15 million USD in a debt financing round led by FMO.

As per the latest reports (6), Lendingkart has made 490 crore INR in revenue in FY2021 and has maintained AUM assets under management of around 2,500 crore INR. So far, as of June 2021, the company has supported more than 1.2 lakh MSMEs with about 6,500 crore INR cumulative credit disbursement.

LendingKart, an online financing startup dedicated to helping small businesses and startups with working capital loans via analytics and big data score to evaluate their customers’ business, is not the only one in the industry. Others include:

  • Capital Float is also an online platform that offers working capital finance to SMEs. Since its inception in 2013, it has secured over 150.4 million USD in funding over 11 rounds (7).
  • InCred is a fintech company that leverages technology and data science to make lending simple, quick, and hassle-free.
  • OfBusiness is a fintech platform that offers smart financing to SMEs.
  • Rupeek is another online lending platform specializing in gold loans, credit risk, and personal loans.

Notably, fintech in India is the world’s fastest-growing market with 67%, over 2,100 fintech companies in operation, incepted in the past five years. Last year, 33 new fintech investment deals worth over 647.5 million USD were closed in India in the June quarter compared to China’s 284.9 million USD.

Today, the valuation of the Indian fintech market is more than 31 billion USD, and there are expectations that it would grow to over 84 billion USD by 2025. Moreover, there are also expectations that India’s fintech transaction value would increase to 138 billion USD by 2023 from 66 billion USD in 2019 (8).

Major trends in the Indian fintech industry includes:

  • Digital banking
  • Open banking
  • Neo banking
  • Aggregators
  • Autonomous finance

There are multiple circumstances at play that drive the growth of the fintech sector in India. Fintech plays a significant role in the country because, despite the government’s encouragement to open Jan Dhan accounts to make basic banking services available to the large unbanked population, the extent of their involvement with the formal financial space is low.

For instance, about 14% of these accounts are dormant, and penetration rates of other financial products such as mutual funds, owned by less than 2% Indians, consumer loans, and insurance are way below international benchmarks.

Even in MSMEs, which make almost a third of India’s GDP, only one-sixth of the 60 million in existence access loans from traditional sources. It alone indicates a 340 billion USD opportunity (9).

It means there is a huge need for fintech innovation in India that can offer hyperlocal solutions. Fintech companies and startups that can offer such new-age technological solutions to enable holistic financial inclusion have the potential to stir the country’s financial movement.

Delhivery

Delhivery, founded in 2011, is a Gurgaon-based supply chain services company. It offers warehousing, transportation, freight, and order fulfillment services.

Its full suite of logistic services and its strategy, which enables faster delivery speed and, thus, decreasing logistics cost, has transformed the logistics industry in India and increased ecommerce support. So far, the company has secured more than 1.3 billion USD in twelve funding rounds (10).

Notably, Delhivery is not the only emerging logistic company in the industry.

Edgistify is another leading logistic company in India that offers to find, lease, and contract warehouses. It also provides storage solutions, warehouse infrastructure services, weighing services, IT, automation, in-house operations for warehouses, packaging solutions, and more. Since its inception in 2017, the Mumbai-based startup has secured over 718k USD in over three seed and angel funding rounds (11).

Rivigo, an emerging company in the logistic industry, offers an online marketplace for trucking services. It networks shippers and truckers for freight transportation. It offers cold chain, full truckload, partial truckload, 3PL, and express shipments. It adopts a relay model to offer relay trucking services and allows users to book and track their shipments online (12).

Xpressbees, an ecommerce logistics company, offers reliable logistics solutions. Incepted in 2015, the company has secured over 277.6 million USD funding in a total of eight funding rounds (13). In FY 2019, the company increased its operation by 99.7%, amounting to 540.95 crore INR. In the year before, it was 270.83 crore INR (14).

India's Fastest Growing Companies
Third-party Logistics Market in India by End-user and Service – Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025

The booming ecommerce industry, which is seeing skyrocketing growth in India, especially amid the pandemic and increased internet and smartphone penetration, has driven several aspiring startups and entrepreneurs to deal in logistics. There is a rapid growth opportunity for businesses involved in ecommerce, hyperlocal delivery, and e-grocery.

Although infrastructure readiness and technology would be the key growth drivers for the Indian logistics industry, entrepreneurs adopting technology for tactical and operational decision making, fleet optimization, routing, data analysis, and strategy will see maximum growth.

There are also opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop and offer end-to-end smart solutions for logistics companies related to IoT, automation, blockchain, AI, robotics, cloud computing, big data analysis, etc.

It is worth mentioning that as per the recently released report of NITI Aayog and RMI, Rocky Mountain Institute, “Fast Tracking Freight in India: A Road Map for Clean and Cost-Effective Goods Transport,” the country can save as much as 3.11 lakh crore INR worth of fuel by 2050 and drop 11 gigatonnes of CO2 consumption by 2030 via deploying a cost-effective and clean goods transportation modes (15).

InMobi

InMobi creates an advertisement serving algorithm that assists in optimizing the ads ranking served on smartphones. Founded in 2007, the company has secured more than 320.6 million USD in seven funding rounds. So far, the Bangalore-based company has made nine acquisitions. Their most recent take-over was Roposo in November 2019.

The company operates a mobile ad network with an extensive range of analytics, ad formats, and monetization tools for app businesses. It creates mobile-first customer engagement portals that transform the economics of influencing international consumers.

InMobi has also built Glance, a screen zero portal that enables users to experience the internet on screen zero of their mobile phones and other smart devices. The company has recorded a 13% YoY growth in revenue from 386.31 crore INR in FY 2019 to 431.68 crore in FY 2020 (16).

Opportunities

Today, mobile and app advertising firms make the bulk of the digital ads market.

As per InMobi’s report on “State of Programmatic Mobile Video Advertising in India 2021,” there has been an unprecedented surge in video consumption in India. According to the company’s data, over 356 million mobile video viewers and over 194% growth in mobile video ads in India (17).

Notably, while video ads have the highest engagement, mobile ads include anything from website display to in-app ads. There has been a growing trend of targeted ad campaigns for over a decade now, leading to the emergence of mobile ad companies. Other platforms similar to InMobi include RichAds, AppsFlyer, AdsCompass, AdActions, and others.

It is also worth highlighting that India’s digital ad spends have doubled since 2016. Yet, it is still lower compared to companies like the US and China.

There are expectations, as per the management consultancy firm, Redseer, India’s digital ad would grow 10x over the next decade and would account for 70 to 85% of the total ad market, which stands at 33% today. The market would touch 25 to 35 billion USD by 2030 from 3 billion USD in 2020.

The drivers of the trend include:

  • Increasing in GDP/Capital
  • Increasing digital consumption
  • and the rise of D2C brands

As more people from Tier-II and III cities engage more digitally via apps, websites, and social media platforms, among others, the trend for ads is more likely to amplify (18). And since almost two-thirds of all digital ad spend makes up for mobile ads, mobile ad companies such as AdMobi have a bright future (18).

However, companies that offer natives, location-based, app-based, in-app, in-game, immersive and interactive, rewarded, and playable ads will find the most success with their campaigns in the upcoming future.

Moreover, companies can get the most out of the growing and lucrative mobile ads market to adopt 100% AI and ML algorithms. Ad companies that can thrive the most in the future are the ones who can evolve and come up with new ways for targeted ads in the absence of third-party cookies.

Finally, smartphone usage would only grow as more people rely on them. Understanding when and how consumers are using smartphones is essential for ad companies to fine-tune their ads and marketing campaigns. However, the key to success in this lucrative business would be to reach the audience with a relatable message at the right time via the right mobile channel (19).

Other Fast-Growing Companies Worth Mentioning

Other rapidly growing companies include:

  • Consure Medical: An emerging medical device firm focused on creating and commercializing novel, and critical care technologies have secured over 473.2k USD in three funding rounds since its inception in 2012.
  • Qure.AI: The company builds deep learning solutions with the help of AI to aid physicians with routine diagnosis and treatment, allowing them to spend more time with their patients and make healthcare more accessible and affordable. The startup has secured over 16 million USD in a single funding round from Sequoia Capital India and MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia.
  • CropIN: A leading AI and Data-led agritech company that offers SaaS solutions to agri-based businesses worldwide. It has secured more than 32.6 million USD over ten funding rounds.
  • Agnikul Cosmos: A space tech startup designs, makes, tests, and launches orbital-class rockets for nano and microsatellites. Since its inception in 2017, the Chennai-based startup has secured over 14.5 million USD in four funding rounds.
  • Playment: It is a fully managed data labeling platform that generates training data for autonomous vehicles, mapping, drones, and similar vision models with high precision. Since its inception in 2015, the Bangalore-based startup has secured over 2.5 million USD funding in four funding rounds.
  • Blood Sure: It is a social platform/PaaS that helps patients and their families connect with the right blood donor and eradicate blood shortage in India by 2027. The Indore-based startup has secured over 5k USD in funding since its inception in 2012. As per the latest data, Blood Sure has a community of 1.25 lakh plus donors throughout India, Nepal, and Bangladesh (20).

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