still the preferred source of funding followed by capital from indian vcsstartup fundamentalsafter two years of relative sobriety there is a sense of animal spirits coming back into the indian startup ecosystem since 2016 startups have been spending cautiously as capital was not flowing freely and profitabilitybreak even became the priority over growth over 55 of the startups surveyed expect their revenues or gross sales to double in the next 12 monthsgrowth is becoming a higher priority over profitability again but at the same time startups are not completely ready to go for growth at all costs as improving unit economics remains a priority while 56 of those polled said that they would expand their employee base by over 25 surprisingly 29 are still filling in just key positionsanother surprising finding was that 70 of the startups said they have either broken even or become contribution margin positive which is primarily making money on each transaction this could be due to the sample set of companies valued at over 100 million that et polled unit economics have improved in spite of high growth higher sales improved gross margins and cost efficiencies in last mile delivery and supply chain have resulted in this improvement said one foundercompetitive scenariothe debate around which company will win indian internets biggest segments remains open while flipkart says it is ahead of amazon india in terms of gross sales the seattlebased online retail giant contests this so is the case between ola and uber digital payments is a new battleground pitting paytm whatsapp and flipkartowned phonepe against each otherwhen et did this survey two years ago respondents expected amazon india and uber to emerge as the market leaders in their respective categories flipkart and ola have proven that wrong this time 57 of the respondents said ola paytm and flipkart would emerge as the winnerssome respondents said while market share dynamics would keep going up and down what matters is which company is able to build businesses and return capitalflipkart has already delivered a multibagger exit as will ola and paytm said a founderunicorn cornerindias unicorn club is poised to double to about 20 members this year the new unicorns are from sectors such as software logistics hospitality and financial technology diversifying the pool from primarily online retail and advertisementbased models companies that have entered this club in 2018 include fooddelivery application swiggy online financial services provider policybazaar online education services company byjus and onlinetooffline retailer paytm mallbut even as this club expands there are questions on whether the older members will remain in it and how many will be able to build lasting enterprises by going for an ipohonestly there are more strugglers than shooting stars in the hereandnow list that said some of the new ones are in my honest opinion better positioned said an investormethodologyet designed two different questionnaires for the surveyone targeting entrepreneurs and the other investors respondents were given multiplechoice answers to pick from but also had the option to elaborate