The last year has been a turbulent time for everyone, especially start-ups, with the pandemic forcing some to completely pivot while others managed to survive and thrive. The world also saw a big shift to online socializing, working, shopping, and more. Companies that are looking to incorporate some of the lessons they’ve learned in the last few months to be able to build a stronger business for the future should expect even more transformation in the future.
Remote Work
While this may have been an obvious point, there’s plenty of room for growth when it comes to remote work all over the world. Although plenty of companies switched to a remote working model in the last year, there were plenty of brand new accompanying issues that had to be solved.
Between issues like security, and collaboration potential, the remote work field is relatively young, and there are plenty of startups that are looking to solve various issues related to it. There were plenty of companies that were providing solutions long before the pandemic, but there was an exponential growth in the solutions field throughout the pandemic itself.
Deliveries
Because of unwillingness to adopt new technologies, the use of robotics for product deliveries has been rather slow in implementation. However, because of the pandemic, what used to seem very complicated and expensive, compared to using people for delivery, quickly became one of the hottest trends throughout the pandemic.
China was one of the pioneers in implementing robotic delivery by using autonomous vehicles that helped consumers receive their grocery orders. Additionally, with the popularity of grocery e-commerce skyrocketing in the last year, the initial timelines for the deployment of these types of tools have been sped up to be able to meet the future growing demand.
Networks
Despite all of the misinformation around 5G, the demand for higher internet speeds has significantly pushed the advancement of this technology. This is because to have better internet speeds, people need better networks which resulted in many companies pushing for faster deployment.
About 40 countries around the world have already launched commercial 5G services and networks, with Australia having rolled out this type of technology several years ago. There are plenty of useful benefits with this new type of network, for example, there are some startups that help municipalities manage their smart city data and public lighting networks. Meanwhile, in another instance, in Spain, a start-up used 5G networks and drones to explore the seabed.
Digital Healthcare
In the last year many institutions, especially those in healthcare, were attempting to decrease the exposure to the virus to workers and patients alike. This resulted in plenty of both private and public health care practices implementing virtual and telehealth services.
Additionally, according to some recent studies, plenty of care services can be delivered virtually instead of doctors having to see the patients in person. This has given a great opportunity for startups in the field to connect physicians with their patients, and with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence, doctors can get help in diagnosing their patients too.