Fintech company CRED named top startup for this year
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, the professional networking site, on Wednesday announced fintech giant CRED as this year’s top startup. Ronnie Screwvala-led edtech unicorn, upGrad was second on the list, followed by Satya Nadella-backed online stock trading platform Groww.
LinkedIn compiles a list of the 25 best startups annually.
Interestingly, while CRED has moved up two spots from last year, both Unacademy and Udaan – the top two startups of 2021 according to LinkedIn – did not make the final list. As reported earlier, both Unacademy and Udaan had laid off at least 750 and 180 employees respectively a few months ago. However, the companies had not officially confirmed the development and provided details of the layoffs. LinkedIn says that startups that have laid off 20% or more of their workforce within the method’s time frame are not eligible for the calculations.
Other notable startups that were on the list last year but didn’t make the cut this year include Razorpay, Meesho, boAt, Urban Company, Pristyn Care, Dunzo, nurture.farm, Schbang, Cogno AI, NoBroker, Ninjacart, rudu, Trell , Mobile Premier League and LIDO Learning (which closed shop and filed for bankruptcy).
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To compile this year’s list, the company looked at platform data between July 2021 and June 2022 across four pillars: employee growth, job seeker interest, member engagement with the company and its employees, and how well these startups drew talent from the flagship LinkedIn top companies. List.
This year, Y Combinator-backed Zepto was the fourth and last to enter the list. Last week, the company’s founders, Aadit Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra were the youngest to make the IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List with a personal fortune of around Rs 1,200 crore and Rs 1,000 crore. Skyroot Aerospace was awarded the fifth best startup, according to LinkedIn.
Overall, 13 of the top 25 startups are based out of Bengaluru, commonly touted as the Silicon Valley of India. LinkedIn also found that 58% of all jobs posted by these startups, on its platform, were for Bengaluru during the period.
The company further revealed that 56% of all hires in these 25 startups were under the age of 30 and 17% were under the age of 25 at the time they joined. “It is also great to see young professionals embracing India’s startup ecosystem. The Indian startup ecosystem is showing great resilience as we continue to see the emergence of new startups with 68% of the list participants appearing for the first time. These startups are navigating the uncertain macro environment by optimizing their businesses for sustainable growth and taking a more cautious approach to scaling their business,” said Nirajita Banerjee, managing editor of LinkedIn News India.
According to LinkedIn, 68% of the 25 startups on the list were debutants. MBA Chai Wala, Spinny, The Good Glamm Group, GrowthSchool, BluSmart, ShareChat, Ditto Insurance, Simpl, Rapido, Classplus, Plark+, BlissClub, DealShare, Ultrahuman, Living Food, FamPay, Agnikul Cosmos, Stanza Living, Pocket FM and Zypp Electric were the others who were on the list.
