The Oracle of Omaha has got an eye for a good bet and it’s proven time and again. Once a popular critic of Apple, Warren Buffett is the largest individual investor in Apple now and continue to buy more stocks of the iPhone maker. His investment in Apple is paying off well and has reached to a level that is more than the combined valuation of all startup unicorns in India.
After the latest surge in the price of Apple share price, Warren Buffett owned Apple stocks are valued $112 billion while the estimated combined valuation of all 21 startup unicorns in India is $73.2 billion!
Buffett started investing in Apple way back in 2016 when he purchased a whopping 9.81 million shares worth around $1 billion. After that in 2019, when he had to report to his own investors, it was revealed that his company Berkshire Hathaway spent $35.287 billion in buying some more Apple shares. Then, consecutively in February 2020, it came to light that he sold somewhat around $800 million worth of Apple shares and didn’t buy any since.
Quite recently, according to Markets Insider, Buffett’s Apple stocks are valued over $112 billion triggered by the 10% rise in the share price of Apple after the company reported its record-shattering June quarterly figures. Thus, currently, Apple is the largest single stock holding of Buffett which represents more than four times his second-largest holding in Bank of America.
Just a few months back we reported about the secret sauce behind the enormous success of Warren Buffett. Interestingly, it was revealed by none other than Oracle of Omaha itself who, despite owning 245 million Apple’s share worth $112 billion, bought his first iPhone quite recently.
Now when it comes to startup unicorns, India, being home to 21 one of them, is currently at the fourth position after the USA (223 unicorns), China (60 unicorns) and the UK (21 unicorns).
Amid the 21 Indian unicorns which are collectively valued at $73.2 billion, it is the fintech giant Paytm which alone claims nearly 22% of the total valuation. It has the highest individual valuation at $16 billion which is then followed by OYO Rooms which is valued at $8 billion and BYJU’s which is valued at $8 billion as well.
It should be noted that the average age of existence for Indian unicorns is 7 years. Out of the 21 unicorns, only two of them are less than four years old – Ola Electric which was founded in the year 2017 is currently the youngest unicorn on the list followed by Udaan which came into existence in the year 2016.
In India, almost one-third of all unicorns such as OYO Rooms, BigBasket, Lenskart, PayTM Mall happens to be in the e-commerce space which is one of the four core competence sectors of the world’s top unicorns. The other three sectors are Fintech, AI and SaaS.
This year, India was able to add three new unicorns to the list with Bengaluru being the unicorn capital of the country with eight unicorns. Other prominent cities Gurugram and Noida follow closely as they are home to six and two unicorns respectively. In terms of valuation, Bengaluru’s contribution to the Indian unicorn list is the addition of unicorns worth $29 billion in total while Gurugram and Noida happen to be contributing to the list by adding unicorns worth $19 billion each.
Now, it remains to be seen if and when the future additions to the Indian unicorn list will be able to collectively topple the latest Apple stock valuation of the wisest and most shrewd investor of our time.
