India’s Most Influential Startups of 2022

Amidst the downturn and the funding winter, 2022 was a year beyond COVID waves and has given rise to startups that have been influential for reasons both positive and negative. Dream 11, Ola, Swiggy, BharatPe, and OYO emerge as the Hottest Startups of 202, according to the latest Annual Newsmakers Reports by Wizikey, a modern Media Monitoring, and PR Management Software.

Innovation in FinTech at a record high, The highlight of 2022 is the rise of the EV Startups – with young players entering the hottest startups list making the buzz in the space – Ola Electric, Ather, BluSmart, Zypp Electric, Ultraviolette, Altigreen, and Battery Smart among notable ones. Zoho and Meesho are new entrants in the Top 10 startups when compared to 2021. In Fintech, CRED moved out from 8th position to 44th, and Zerodha entered the top 20 Newsmakers of 2022. In quick commerce, Zepto leaped to the 28th position moving closer to the legacy player Dunzo (20th position), with the controversial but strong uptick in the category. 

This latest report by Wizikey, Asia’s fastest-growing communications technology and PR software recognizes the hottest startups and Newsmakers of 2022, that have been visible for various reasons from raising capital to new product launches. The rankings are based on Wizikey’s News Score which measures news visibility for brands & individuals by analyzing the volume of news, headlines presence, and the reach of publications.

Wizikey’s, AI and ML technology gathers media intelligence from over 50 million news articles across 400,000+ online publications. The report considered over 2000 Indian startups for analysis (excluding the companies that have been listed recently.) 

India’s Most Influential Startups of 2022 – Top 10

Dream11, the revolutionary online gaming company, grabbed the first position. Sporting events like IPL 2022 and ICC Men’s World Cup 2022 contributed heavily to their visibility. Dream11 is the frontrunner in the rising gaming industry in India valued at $2.6 billion in FY 2022 and to be worth $8.6 billion by 2027.

Ola, the road transport tech company, ranked number two, with the help of the rise in the EV sector, launching scooters and creating consistent buzz throughout the year.

Swiggy, the food tech company, ranked third for its slew of measures, right from raising funds at the beginning of the year to acquiring Dineout, and Swiggy Instamart being named the official partner of Tata IPL 2022

BharatPe ranked fourth amidst controversies with then CEO, Ashneer Grover to reaching an all-time high of $20 billion in Annualized Total Payments value (TPV) and expand its footprint to 400 cities.

The IPO-bound hospitality startup OYO made a lot of buzz for delayed IPO, reduced valuation, and ranked fifth. 

Commenting on this year’s report, Aakriti Bhargava, Co-founder, and CEO of Wizikey says, “2022 was challenging times for companies where news was created for good as well as  It’s a very tough environment to operate in and Indian startups have done an incredible job of being in news for the right reasons.  Wizikey’s Newsmakers Ranking series aims to highlight the startups that created news in the year. This is the world’s most exhaustive ranking based on an algorithm that looks at more than 50 million data points collected over the year across 400,000 domains. 

Byju’s(6), Unacademy(7), Meesho(8), Zoho(9), Razorpay(10), Bharat Biotech(11), Zerodha(12), A fairly new entrant in the list is Polygon, at spot 13, thanks to the continuous crypto controversies, followed by UpGrad(14). Again a fairly new entrant is Boat Lifestyle at Spot 15, followed by AtherEnergy (16), CoinSwitch(17), MamaEarth(18), CoinDCX(19), and Dunzo(20). Interestingly, Fintech emerged as the hot sector contributing to the highest number of startups(22) in the top 100. 

Sectorial Rankings:

Top Fintech Companies of India – 2022

BharatPe ranked number one in the sector and 4th in the overall startup ranking. Razorpay dominated the second sectorial position but ranked 10th in the list. This was followed by Zerodha, Angel One, and Pinelabs

Top HealthTech Companies of India – 2022

Bharat Biotech made the most news in the HealthTech sector, followed by PharmEasy, Cult.fit, Pristyn Care and Practo

Top ConsumerTech Companies of India – 2022

Swiggy has outshined in the ConsumerTech industry and stood at one. Dunzo is second and Book My Show is in the third position

Top E-commerce Companies of India – 2022

Meesho outran all its competition and ranked one in its sector. This is followed by Snapdeal, Zepto, and Udaan

Top EdTech Companies of India – 2022

Byju’s made the most news in EdTech, followed by Unacademy, and UpGrad. 

Check out the list of Top 500 India’s Most Influential Startups of 2022