Walk into any one of the many start-up events organized across India, and inevitably the image of an Indian bazaar comes to mind: people rushing around, shouting, bargaining, answering phones with great excitement, laughing loudly, boasting, blushing, and generally being optimistic, as if they are at the beginning of a rising trend of well-being. Such optimism might seem justified. According to data compiled by Fortune magazine,a from just eight'unicorns' in 2015, the number of start-ups in India valued at more than $1 billion has grown to 26. What is interesting is that in 2018 alone, India added eight unicorns to the club. These include diverse entities such as Ola, started in India as a competitor to Uber and has since expanded its footprint into the U.K. (and is eyeing Australia); an insurance aggregator called PolicyBazaar; the e-commerce site Paytm Mall; an eyewear retailer called Lenskart; food technology aggregators such as Swiggy and Zomato, and hotel-room aggregators like OYO and FabHotels. Thousands of entrepreneurs start up every year and aspire to become one of the new unicorns.

BANGALORE, INDIA – Among the five teams competing in the world's first international lunar probe contest, one of them, India's TeamIndus, is unique in its beginning and breadth of cooperation with a rival team. The Bangalore-based startup firm is the only Indian team in the Google Lunar XPRIZE contest, in which five privately funded finalists are competing to land their spacecraft on the moon and deploy robotic rovers on its surface. TeamIndus has partnered with the Japanese team to transport the latter's rover as well as its own to the moon using its own spacecraft, which is to be launched aboard an Indian rocket in March. It is the first collaboration between two of the contest's private enterprise competitors. "It's a privilege that we have the Japanese team flying with us to the moon surface," said Rahul Narayan, founder of TeamIndus.