Recent Trends in Startup Ecosystem
If you will not change yourself as per the trend, you will be changed.
We don’t know how you think of this statement but we can provide real examples, which can help you to believe in the above statement. You must have witnessed the fall of Nokia. CEO of Nokia, during the press conference to announce its acquisition by Microsoft, ended his speech saying with teary eyes “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”. Nokia has been a market leader & a respectable company for years.
Also Read: Top ideas to start with minimum investment
CEO of Nokia said, they didn’t do anything wrong, but this is what made them wrong – they failed to follow the market trends. There are many relatable stories of many biggies in the start-up ecosystem including Yahoo, Orkut, etc. Not going into deep analysis of the failure of these start-ups, let’s discuss the recent trends in startup ecosystem and companies need to follow to get success in their endeavor.
Here are the recent trends you will need to focus on to make an impact in the society:
Artificial Intelligence
Unlike a few years back, AI is not just a concept now. It’s already a good percentage of share in almost every industry. If you check it, you will find it there in marketing tools, analytics tools, customer service platforms, digital ads, and smartphones.
What is Artificial Intelligence – A Beginners’ Guide!
According to a survey, around 65% of people actively using AI right now without knowing that they are using. The major reason is it’s not yet that much developed to look like what we once expected: an intelligent robot from a science fiction movie, but we reached almost there also. Currently, it’s working in the background of our systems to automate the processes to make it faster, efficient, accurate and cost-effective.
As per recent trends in startup ecosystem, there is a lot of opportunity in the AI industry which Start-ups can explore. AI can perform activities that would normally require human intelligence, such as decision-making, pattern recognition, and even creative endeavors.
Voice Recognition Technology
In back 2011, consumers were very much fascinated by Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, when it was released with the iPhone 4S. The most interesting thing with that feature was the fact that one could ask Siri to complete different tasks of a phone such as calling someone, surfing the web, etc. Soon after that, Google also entered to compete with Apple, with Google Assistant.
Now, this technology has grown up & is entering our homes, cars, businesses & everywhere. According to a report, approx. 40 million Americans own a smart speaker now, like the Amazon Echo or Google Home.
In 2019 & onwards, start-ups don’t essentially need to develop their own voice recognition device. There are profuse opportunities to develop proprietary algorithms and various other applications in the voice technology domain.
As per recent trends in Startup Ecosystem, there are tremendous opportunities for voice recognition technology in industries like education, automotive, manufacturing, agriculture, business services, healthcare, etc. In combination with AI, voice recognition technologies can serve various specific niche & can get success.
The Internet of Things
IOT is referred to as “The Next Industrial Revolution” and “Industry 4.0”. Mainly, the internet of things is a network of things which can communicate as per requirement through a system of computers, machines, digital systems & objects that can transfer data over a network.
In this era of smart-everything, IoT has practically boundless use cases. Currently, many start-ups are working in this segment and many of them got succeeded also. Among the start-up trends moving forward, IOT stands to be one of the most lucrative industry for entrepreneurs: As a report, worth of IoT market will be approx.$590 billion by the end of 2020.
Big Data
Individuals often slip-up the term “Big Data” to simply mean “large sets of data.” In fact, it denotes data sets so hefty that it can’t be analyzed by traditional computational software tools. In order to draw value from the data, new tools, like AI, must be applied to find patterns and trends.
In a business sense, Big Data refers to the large amount of data that businesses are flooded with their daily operations. This includes consumer data, market trends & analytics, and inter-operational data.
Most businesses are successfully collecting this data, but only a few are making use of it. According to survey data, more than 40% of the companies are not able to take benefit from their data.
As per recent trends in the startup ecosystem, start-ups need to get a grip on Big Data otherwise they will struggle in the coming days as data production will going to increase by more than 4,000% by 2020. Big Data is a very essential element for the future of digital marketing, Agriculture, security, supply chain management, defense, healthcare and host of other applications. The major use cases that can be derived from Big Data are:
- Market insight & analytics
- Predictive analytics
- Cost-effectiveness
- Marketing effectiveness
- Behavioral analytics
- High-performance computing, and more…
Digital Marketing
When it comes to marketing, digital marketing is the best solution for businesses in today’s era – internet users to cross 627 million in India & 4.39 billion worldwide.
Digital marketing is one of the most significant and cost-effective strategies to fortify any business. Its strategy starts from growing awareness about a brand to lead generation, social selling, & customer service offerings.
There is a huge potential for start-ups to harvest the opportunities in digital marketing as every industry including education, healthcare, fitness, e-commerce, etc. has its requirement. Standard practices in digital marketing include SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SMO (Social Media Optimization), Content Marketing, Lead Generation & other paid ad campaigns, affiliate marketing, etc.
Also Read: A Step by Step Guide to write your Business Plan
There are plenty more trends we could get into, but we need to wrap up here with the key take away through which you could be able to track more trends by yourself:
- Look for Patterns
- Consider Knock on Effects
- Are they really Trends?
- Do they align with your business & goals?