Initial public offering (IPO) has been one of the favored routes for venture capitalists (VCs) to exit and earn a hefty return on investment (ROI) on their portfolio of startup investments. Against this backdrop, 10 startup unicorns (with >US$1bn valuation) have tapped public markets between January and April 2021 and more are set to go public within the next 12-18 months, reveals the Startup Scorecard on Disruptor Intelligence Center by GlobalData, a leading Data and Analytics Company.

GlobalData’s Startup Scorecard methodology comprises three broad pillars: Investment, Innovation and Market Presence, which are further divided into 13 KPIs on which each startup is relatively ranked based on their performance. Startups which are ranked high in the scorecard are highly probable to go public soon.

Apoorva Bajaj, Practice Head, Financial Markets at GlobalData, comments: “Unicorn IPOs are on the rise as companies look to take advantage of the current scenario flush with liquidity. Furthermore, undertaking the public listing provides unicorns with access to even larger pool of capital but it comes at a cost of reduction in autonomy and increase in compliance costs.”

An analysis from the first iteration of the list of GlobalData’s Startup Scorecard as of early January 2021 reveals that 10 out of the top 100 ranked startups are now listed on stock exchanges. As of early May 2021, out of top 100 ranked startups, 24 companies have announced their plans to go public soon.

During January to April 2021, some notable startup unicorns which went public were Affirm, ChargePoint, Coinbase and Deliveroo. Other unicorns like Zomato, Byju’s, Ola, Instacart and Rivian amongst others have announced their plans to go public within the next one and half years.

Mr Bajaj concludes: “GlobalData’s Startup Scorecard enables identification and shortlisting of startups for respective use cases as potential investors, partners, acquisition targets or even as vendors. The Scorecard ranks 10,000 startups using quantifiable data to ensure that it is objective and can be comparatively measured across different sectors, geographies and themes.”