A thousand unicorns. That’s how many billion-dollar startups India could produce over the next two decades — and it’s why investors are betting on it to power the world’s next great tech surge. One of those investors is Aditya Mishra, a Columbia and GW Business School grad and former exec at Yahoo (APO) and Accenture (ACN), who now leads BAT VC, a $100 million early-stage venture fund focused on AI-first startups in India and the U.S.
But the potential is not the result of a sudden shift. As Mishra sees it, this moment has been decades in the making. “India has all the ingredients to be at par with China and the U.S.,” he told Quartz, backing it up with numbers: 800 million people under 35, a vast, extraordinarily tech-savvy educated class, and Indian capital itself stepping up to the plate.
A decade ago, 75% of Indian IPO funding came from abroad, Mishra points out. Now, domestic investors account for up to 80%. Brokerage accounts have jumped from 36 million in 2020 to 160 million in 2024, which makes for an increasingly liquid financial ecosystem, helping further de-risk the environment for foreign investors.
India’s tech sector has evolved, too — well beyond its outsourcing origins
Global tech companies opening Indian operations have created similar dynamics to Silicon Valley as ex-Google (GOOGL), Meta (META), and OpenAI engineers and executives strike out on their own, founding startups that aim at both domestic and global growth, with innovation concentrated in AI, ML, robotics, deeptech, logistics, and fintech. Its AI sector alone is seeing 32% annual growth.
That momentum is beginning to show up in public markets, too: India led the world with 338 IPOs in 2024, a 44% increase from the previous year, raising nearly $21 billion.
As these homegrown companies come up within the complex linguistic, economic and social environment of modern India, they run up against and solve the exact sort of complicated problems that allow them to grow into global entities. Think cross-border payments and sophisticated supply chains. So it’s no wonder India has emerged as the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem.
U.S. venture capital is already following the signal
While the country’s economic liberalization began in the 1990s, a more recent wave of “China-plus-one” strategies — accelerated by trade tensions, supply chain recalibration, and geopolitical reshuffling — is bringing fresh foreign interest. “You’re seeing a shift toward bilateral trade agreements,” Mishra said, arguing that venture capital should reflect that realignment.
BAT VC’s thesis is built around dual-market value creation: backing U.S. startups expanding into India and Indian startups with global ambitions. Mishra estimates the bidirectional model can generate 1.5 to 2 times the return of regionally siloed investments. It’s an arbitrage opportunity most VCs are still missing, Mishra said.
Of course, structural challenges remain, from uneven regulatory enforcement to governance issues. But for investors willing to take the long view, Mishra sees an inflection point. The key to understanding the opportunity is recognizing that “India has many Indias in it.” It’s a country where world-class innovation exists alongside massive inequality, and where seemingly contradictory trends reflect a bigger picture.
“Everything can be true at once,” he said.
That complexity isn’t a bug — it’s what gives Indian startups an edge
When you build in India, you’re building for scale, for fragmentation, for some regulatory ambiguity, as well as for different languages, payments, and regions, Mishra explained. That’s precisely what prepares Indian tech companies to go global.
For U.S. investors, he believes the message is simple: The next twenty years of tech growth won’t look like the last twenty. Everyday investors may get exposure to India’s tech scene through ETFs, but there’s a case for the more direct VC play, too. Venture in India (and elsewhere) represents the business of tomorrow, Mishra argued. “Everything else is the business of today.”
Analysts beyond BAT are seeing the same signal. In a 2023 report, Goldman Sachs (GS) projected India could overtake the U.S. by 2075 to become the second-largest economy in the world. While the timeline may vary depending on who you’re speaking to, the underlying logic remains consistent: India’s young population, rapidly growing tech sector, and expanding capital markets create a compelling story, playing out in real time.
In the meantime, the idea of 1,000 unicorns is a fun future to contemplate — and to quantify
Assuming a baseline valuation of $1 billion apiece, that would mean $1 trillion in startup value alone. But the math gets even wilder fast. If India’s unicorns follow the path of U.S. giants such as Stripe, SpaceX, or OpenAI — or even local standouts like Flipkart (WMT) and BYJU’S — average valuations could land much higher.
Run the numbers and you’re looking at anywhere from $2 to $5 trillion in private or potentially public market value over the next few decades. That’s an industrial shift to echo Silicon Valley itself or the Chinese tech boom. India may still be building its tech future, but if the unicorn count is even half right, the scale of what’s coming is hard to ignore.
Read More
Catherine Baab