Indian startups continue to hit headlines. A healthcare startup, Pristyn Care, specialising in non-emergency secondary surgeries is the latest to join the coveted unicorn list in the country. A unicorn is a startup with valuation of $1 billion or more.

Recently, it raised $96 million in a series E round that was led by Sequoia Capital.

The valuation of Pristyn Care, now at $1.4 billion, has more than doubled in the last seven months. Business Standard said that Pristyn Care is the 42nd startup which has become a unicorn in 2021.

With the recent round of funding, the firm now plans to expand to over 50 cities and towns. India already ranks third only after the US and China to have the largest number of unicorns.

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Besides, Pristyn Care, Several new startup brands such as Myglam, Cure Fit, Grofers, Licious, Cred among others have also turned unicorns this year.

According to Inc42, a media platform tracking Indian startups and entrepreneurs, if the present euphoria continues, “India will manage to get more than 100 unicorns by 2022, much earlier than the previous estimation of 2023.”

According to Invest India, the Indian unicorns have not only contributed to innovations, but have become important for employment generation. “Till FY 2016-17, approximately one unicorn was being added every year. Over the past four years (since FY 2017-18), this number has been increasing exponentially, with a whopping 66% Year-on-Year growth in the number of additional unicorns being added every year,” it said.

“Despite the third wave of Covid-19 pandemic looming large and slow economic recovery, venture capital (VC) investors seem to be reposing faith in the Indian start-ups ecosystem. In fact, Indian start-ups stood next only to Chinese counterparts in terms of VC funding value among the APAC countries during January to July 2021,” GlobalData, a data and analytics company noted.