Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs, Douglas Research Advisory

Douglas Kim

Nearly 25 years of experience in analyzing hundreds of companies, especially in Asia. Deep expertise in the following sectors:
- Technology (E-commerce, SaaS, Internet)
- Consumer 
- Special Situations/Deep Value Plays
- Holdcos/Stubs
- Asian Unicorns/Private Companies

Korea/Asia, Events, IPOs

The Week that Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma - Unicorns & Super Apps, SCG Packaging, and Thai Banks

2022 IPOs Pipeline Worldwide (Top 100 Companies)

2023 IPOs Pipeline Worldwide (Top 100 Companies)

Gojek and Grab - A Merger of the Super Apps on the Offing? We Think Not.

ByteDance (字节跳动) Pre-IPO: Global Ambition Meets Regulatory Challenges

Private Capital Markets

In this insight, we provide the top 100 unicorns in Asia (including summaries), broken down by the major countries in Asia. China, India, and Korea lead the Asian countries in having the most number of Asian unicorns. We used the standard definition of a unicorn which refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
Clearly, one of the key differences in the global markets now as compared to a decade or two decades ago is the fact that the world's biggest venture capital and private equity firms are willing to invest a greater amount of capital in attractive Unicorns and "Pre-Unicorns" which has resulted in many of these private companies delaying their potential exit to IPO at later stages of their businesses. 
There has been so much money made from the first generation tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. Many of these companies were not profitable in their early stages of growth but later gained tremendous economies of scale. Therefore, many investors in the Asian unicorns that have seen the progress of the first-generation tech giants are willing to invest in promising, young companies without profitability now to see their business development take place which could potentially reward them with outstanding returns later on.

In this insight, we provide the top 100 unicorns in Asia (including summaries), broken down by the major countries in Asia. China, India, and Korea lead the Asian countries in having the most number of Asian unicorns. We used the standard definition of a unicorn which refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
Clearly, one of the key differences in the global markets now as compared to a decade or two decades ago is the fact that the world's biggest venture capital and private equity firms are willing to invest a greater amount of capital in attractive Unicorns and "Pre-Unicorns" which has resulted in many of these private companies delaying their potential exit to IPO at later stages of their businesses. 
There has been so much money made from the first generation tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. Many of these companies were not profitable in their early stages of growth but later gained tremendous economies of scale. Therefore, many investors in the Asian unicorns that have seen the progress of the first-generation tech giants are willing to invest in promising, young companies without profitability now to see their business development take place which could potentially reward them with outstanding returns later on. 

ByteDance

Top 100 Asian Unicorns