In the midst of a pandemic, India now has half-a-dozen unicorns as payment startup Razorpay’s valuation more than doubles to $1 billion with its latest $100 million fund-raise -- co-led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and marquee venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. For Razorpay, the pandemic has accelerated its journey to the coveted unicorn club as the Bengaluru-based company saw five times growth in transaction value to $25 billion as compared to last year and business quickly recovering past pre-COVID-19 levels. TOI first reported in August about Sequoia, an existing backer, being in talks to co-lead the round. While initially, the Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator alumnus was looking at a valuation of around $700-800 million, the pandemic induced push for digital payments and SMEs to come online catapulted Razorpay reaching the milestone valuation of $1 billion, people aware of the matter said. With this, in 2020, three unicorns have emerged in fin-tech (Pine Labs, Zerodha and Razorpay), one in software (Postman), one in ed-tech (Unacademy) and one in the beauty space (Nykaa). “This is being driven by the adoption of technology by all kinds of business. A retailer or a spa might be finding it tough to do business unless they have an online presence. That is why there is a paradox of retailers and the hospitality industry are suffering but technology companies supporting them are not. That is why money is flowing into tech and valuations are going up,” said Mohan Kumar, managing partner at software-focused venture firm Avataar. Razorpay now has five million merchants compared to 1 million in 2019. While its payment gateway remains a core business, it has been expanding in lending and neo-banking services. Razorpay co-founder Harshil Mathur told TOI that GIC’s backing, beyond the capital, would be critical in the company’s journey for an initial public offering (IPO) at a later stage of around 3-5 years from now. In total, the company has raised over $206 million since starting in 2014.