This decade is just a synonym for entrepreneurship. And they commit their word while bearing the flag ‘WE ARE HERE TO STAY’. Plus, bubbling out of cluttered markets and perceptions, they are making their way to be a real ‘Unicorn’.
For the ones who don’t know what a ‘Unicorn’ is – a company when valued at $1billion achieves the status of a unicorn.
It’s just a matter of time when once a startup, now a unicorn starts delivering value to its customers as a result of the founder’s market disruption strategy and intuitive decisions. Not sticking to a single model, hit-and-trials over the years shape up the right model, addressing the right (unmet) customers at an unmatched value. Only those startups where a ‘fit’ emerges between its offering and its target consumer needs, turn into a unicorn.
Disruptions can come in different forms. Making a mark by disrupting the market internally is the one we have witnessed over this decade of entrepreneurship. External disruptions like a pandemic, economic changes, and wars pose an impact that can either make a startup or a unicorn. Or make it have a taste of soil. Businesses capturing pain points while juggling external disruptions have chances to grow tremendously. It’s just a matter of opportunity.
To think right, startups we have witnessed entering the unicorn club are all solving customers' unmet needs. As per InvestIndia, India is home to 100 unicorns with a total valuation of $332.7bn as of 5th May 2022. Unicorns in the retail industry have a 9.7% share among all the industries peaking at the third position (on a global scale).
FIVE TRENDS THAT ARE CONTRIBUTING THEIR PART TO DISRUPTIONS
1. Platform Economies –
Scaling it to the financial sector, the growth of the platform economy has seen tremendous growth. The need for seamless, cross-border, highly scalable digital payments via different platforms has increased. Talking in the retail context, its impact can be felt on different Richter scales.
Economic digitization has established the infrastructural foundation for digital currencies. Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets have proven a golden shot for unicorns associated with them. They are creating new exchanges for digital assets, the core for future innovation.
2. Energy Drift –
Realizing the current environmental challenges, every industry is getting its steps forward toward a green future. Around 25 countries including the USA, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, and many more have implemented/scheduled carbon taxes. Moreover, the world’s second-largest cement manufacturer has planned to slow down its operations to reduce carbon footprint/emission as a step towards a green future. As an alternative, they are into producing green concrete, cement, and many other sustainable materials.
Consumption of traditional fuels like petroleum, and diesel is reducing in the wake of green fuels. Ultimately, they will reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse effects. A glance at How Green Hydrogen Will Create a Green Future to get a better understanding of achieving lower carbon footprints by increased usage of green materials.
3. The Meta Xp –
The Gen Z thing.
The attraction of EdTech, gaming and streaming unicorns towards metaverse was significant even before the pandemic. They raised billions of dollars, collectively. But the pandemic posed an opportunity for these businesses as the most tech-savvy Generation Z were/are playing a key role in making things possible, formative, and fortunate.
The pandemic-influenced friction is using social media to search, stroll, and shop – social shopping has gained a foot/click hold at global levels. Thus, felicitating digitized shopping experience. More of it is covered in ‘How Metaverse is Posing Possibilities for Shoppers’. With the convergence of metaverse and crypto, the trend is just getting started. We can’t fully envision it though 5G has that potential is fortunate-ing web 3.0 economy.
4. Virtual-ness –
Here, we will relate virtual-ness with health and wellness. The perception has changed towards how people access healthcare (before and after the pandemic).
Not only with physical health issues, but teleconsultation has also been a part of mental health issues too. Managing prescriptions remotely. Plus, mental health cases had grown significantly throughout the pandemic as the remote work culture has posed problems like depression, self-doubts, ADHD, etc. on large scale. Yes, we can connect this with a human being the social animal who can’t take the isolated environment for a longer period. Many start-ups emerged on the surface, dealing with easy and quick access to both physical and mental health issues. Using AI and machine learning, the drug development process has been fast-paced with more productivity.