From 6,300 to 100: The startups defining India's innovation priorities
What the Leap to Unicorn Top 100 reveals about India's innovation priorities for 2025
Last Updated: Jan 29, 2026, 15:05 IST6 min
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Selected from a pool of more than 6,300 applicants, the Leap to Unicorn Season 3 Top 100 Startups to Watch Out For list is finally here. These startups registered for the program, learned from its virtual bootcamp and emerged from a rigorous shortlisting process to feature in this exclusive report. This Top 100 is more than a list. It is a snapshot of where India's early stage innovation is focusing as 2025 draws to a close.
The intent behind Leap to Unicorn matters here. The Indian startup ecosystem is in a period of strong momentum. Entrepreneurs are building in India for the world and plugging directly into the country's growth story. With this backdrop, IDFC FIRST Bank joined hands with Moneycontrol and CNBC-TV18 to create Leap to Unicorn, a founder success program that provides mentoring, networking and fundraising opportunities for India's most promising startups through a meticulously planned journey. The program is designed to give founders the right resources and opportunities at the right time so they can build stronger, more scalable businesses.
India's startup landscape is now too large and too complex for intuition alone. The noise at the top of the funnel rises every year. The quality of the Top 100, and the patterns that emerge when they are studied together, give us a grounded sense of what Indian founders are building, where they are doing it and how they are capitalised. This year's list shows clear shifts. It is more problem-led than trend-led, more impact-heavy than hype-heavy, and shaped by founders who didn't wait for perfect conditions to start building.
What the Top 100 reveals about India's 2025 build agenda
The most visible trend is the weight of problem-solving categories. HealthTech accounts for 16, CleanTech follows with 15, agriculture contributes 13, and social and impact-driven ventures add another 8. Together, these four areas make up more than half the list.
This is a practical reading of the country's needs and a recognition of where the next decade of opportunity lies. India's scale, demographics and regulatory prioritisation have created conditions where healthcare delivery, energy transition, sustainable manufacturing and agricultural productivity aren't abstract problems, but investment-ready themes that demand committed builders. The presence of these categories at the top of a competitive jury-driven process signals that founders are shifting their attention to harder markets that reward resilience and technical depth.
Technology is embedded across the list, but not as window dressing. AI is present as an enabler. Founders are using it to solve for diagnostics, energy optimisation, supply chain accuracy, agri-input management and SME process automation. The trend is clear: India's early stage companies are using AI to build specific tools for specific sectors, not broad platforms in search of a problem. This is a more grounded and sustainable direction than the early hype cycles we saw a few years ago.
Where these companies are being built
The Top 100 remains anchored in India's major hubs. Bengaluru leads with 15 entries, followed by Mumbai with 13, and Delhi NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Pune forming the rest of the urban spine. These hubs continue to concentrate technical talent, early believers, supply chain partners and proximity to capital.
It is important to note, however, that 40% of the list comes from emerging cities: Indore, Jaipur, Raipur, Guwahati, Pilani, Haridwar, Nagpur and Varanasi appear repeatedly, and this isn't token representation.
This distribution matters. It shows that the maps investors use to scout talent are widening, and that founders outside the major hubs are building companies with enough quality, traction and credibility to stand toe-to-toe with those from the metros. Leap to Unicorn's national reach and open-access format also plays a part here. When a program attracts thousands of applications from across the country, it privileges capability over geography. The result is a pipeline that reflects India's true entrepreneurial spread.
Capital signals from the cohort
Most of the Top 100 sits in early stages, but not at idea level. 37 are already seed or angel funded. 26 are bootstrapped and 12 are backed by friends and family. 11 have moved into pre-Series territory and 3 have reached Series A and beyond.
This mix gives the Top 100 its depth. It shows that early ideas and advancing companies can exist in the same discovery pipeline. It also tells us that most founders entering programs like Leap to Unicorn are not looking for validation alone. They are looking for structured access to mentors, investors and industry connections to accelerate the next phase of growth.
For IDFC FIRST Bank, these signals are valuable. The bank positions itself as a startup-friendly institution, with offerings designed specifically for early stage companies. Its teams engage closely with founders who are formalising their banking, building governance, and planning responsible growth. Leap to Unicorn was conceived out of these learnings, in partnership with CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol, to give promising founders a structured path to mentoring and market access.
When capital partners study a vetted list like this, they gain early visibility into emerging business models, sectors and financial needs. From that lens, Leap to Unicorn exceeds its mandate as a founder success program, and is slowly becoming a high-trust national discovery pipeline for the ecosystem.
Why this pipeline matters now
The Indian startup ecosystem has reached a stage where scale alone is no longer the story. The rate of company creation remains high, but the gap between the top of the funnel and credible investment opportunities has widened as investors have become more selective and circumspect. After all, as Ankit Anand, partner at Rice Ventures stated in a Leap to Unicorn webinar earlier this year, only 13% of startups manage to recoup their investors' money - let alone deliver outsized returns. Within that context, programs that attract large applicant pools and apply structured evaluation can help close this gap.
Leap to Unicorn functions as this kind of infrastructure. It starts with registration, inviting founders from across India to step into a national spotlight. It then runs a structured bootcamp, giving them access to knowledge, mentors and peer learning. After this, the shortlisting process identifies the most promising companies for the Top 100 Startups to Watch Out For report. Finally, selected startups move to the finale, where the top five pitch to investors.
At every stage, criteria and filters are clear. For investors, this means they can approach the Top 100 knowing that each company has been through a defined journey and evaluated by a jury. For corporates, it becomes easier to discover partners who are already operating at a certain level of maturity. For founders, Leap to Unicorn offers a platform that opens doors, irrespective of where they are based or who they know.
This year, the Forbes India December issue becomes the stage where Leap to Unicorn's Top 100 Startups to Watch Out For take their place in the sun. The list signals momentum, ambition and a clear shift toward domains that matter for India's next decade of growth. It highlights founders who are choosing to work in complex sectors and shows the kind of pipeline that ecosystem institutions can build on.
As this Top 100 moves into its next phase of growth, a new chapter of Leap to Unicorn begins. Season 4 will open registrations soon, inviting founders who are ready for scale to step into a structured path of learning, visibility and support. For entrepreneurs building for India and the world, this is an opportunity to meet the right partners at the right time, strengthen the fundamentals and accelerate momentum with guidance from some of the most respected voices in the ecosystem.
If you are building boldly, working on real problems and aiming to grow with clarity and intent, Season 4 is your moment to engage with a platform designed for your journey. Learn more here.
The pages slugged ‘Brand Connect’ are equivalent to advertisements and are not written and produced by Forbes India journalists.
First Published: Jan 29, 2026, 15:08
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