Wizikey Report: Meet the Bulls in the year of the Bear, the Hottest Startups of 2020

The Hottest Startups of 2020 Report by Wizikey celebrates the top 100 most influential startups in India. And the hot sectors are Fintech, E-commerce, SaaS, Logistics and Edtech, that have successfully redefined the ecosystem in 2020. The report also strategically delves into an understanding of the top players in the ecosystem. These have created their mark in a certain industry by showing the way for others.

Wizikey has created the Hottest Startups of 2020 with its proprietary AI and ML technology. This includes data mining and analysis within startups and unicorns in the ecosystem. The tech crawled through a total of 5 million news articles over the year to make this report. These 5 million articles are spread across 500+ distinct publications. It has, further, considered the top 100 Startups and Unicorns according to the amount of funding they received.

What does the report say?

As per the report, Paytm, Dream11, Zomato, Ola, Swiggy, Big Basket, Oyo, Byjus, Snapdeal, and Unacademy are the top 10 hottest startups of 2020. All ten startups hold the title of unicorns. Paytm tops the list in terms of creating the most consistent buzz throughout the year while Dream11 bags the title for the prominence of its brand.

In terms of hot sectors, due to the strong wave of cashless transactions like UPI and wallet payments that both metro and non-metro cities witness, 2020 emerged as the year of Fintech. According to the report, 19 of the top 100 startups are from the Fintech industry with Paytm ranking at number 1. A fairly new entrant in the startup world CRED, at spot 11, has become one of the hottest startups in a very short period of time. It is also the youngest player in the list of hottest startups. Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s investee company, Khatabook also finds a place as one of the hottest startups in the country.

The B2C e-commerce industry, especially beauty, also received a splash in 2020 with players like Nykaa and Purplle standing up tall and beautiful. The cohort of companies in this sector amongst others transformed overnight to match the demand and supply for 1.3 billion Indians. Big Basket found itself leading the sectoral list but ranking overall at number 6, way above Grofers which is ranked at 15.

Commenting on the same Anshul Sushil, CEO and Co-Founder, Wizikey, said,

“Pairing the right brand narrative with an optimal platform is key to the positioning of any startup in the country. Fintech is clearly doing it right and is leading the ranks, having found maximum prominence in our list. Furthermore, as we deep dive into sectors, while the top players continue to lead the way, it is exciting to see some new names surface to the list.”

Sharing his views on the importance of news analytics for brands, he said “At Wizikey, we leverage Big Data Technologies including Predictive analytics and Machine Learning to analyse millions of news data points and create meaningful and actionable insights for companies. This includes identifying patterns and trends in the industry and sentiment analysis of the news, thus helping companies dig deeper into topics which are contributing to low trust for them with consumers.”

Some more hot sectors and players from the report:-

● It is interesting to note Enterprise-tech did not see any player from its segment in the top 20. Leading the pack is Freshworks at rank 37.

● Essentials and supply chains became the drivers of the economy, especially during the lockdown period. Thus, the logistics sector also saw an unprecedented boom. Two unicorns featured in this category Delhivery and Rivigo, buoyed by the sentiment they brought to the market

● Having witnessed a boom in investments and consumer interest, the Edtech industry reimagined itself to match up to the demand for education via the digital medium. Byjus and Unacademy at 8 and 10 rank took the hotspots in the category. Both the unicorns were abuzz for diverse reasons - from funding to expansions and acquisitions

● Some players which surprised us by creating quite a stir in these sectors were: a) Dunzo which created more buzz than all players put together in the logistics category and also b) Vedantu, which emerged as the most positive brand in the top 100 hottest startups list.

While the world went abuzz with the above sectors bringing in more faith and hope for survival; players like OYO, Urban Company, Ather Energy, Shuttl, and Medgenome roughed up their way ahead. Most of them received massive flak for declaring mass layoffs or announcing IPOs in the pandemic-driven world.