The sudden economic and social changes in the market have deeply affected many businesses all over the globe. Only the businesses that could change and adapted themselves survived and the rest of them faced a sudden collapse. The ones that acted fast we’re able to make through the journey.

Several businesses all over the globe evolved at an incredible speed and changed their business models to keep serving the old customer at the same time capturing new ones. The most important agent in this process was the presence of technology.

The new “Normal” that is technology-enabled has expanded rapidly in the innovative business market. In fact, several experts say that we have jumped five years in the future when it comes to consumer and digital adoption. Here are some of the industries which have changed as per the digital adoption.

Education

In the United States alone, more than 50 million schools closed in the month of March 2020. Several students have to start their learning cycles digitally. The education sector was already undergoing digital transformations, and the presence of the pandemic accelerated its growth suddenly. Several platforms were used in an unprecedented manner as the schools started to offer remote learning sessions for young children.

Entertainment

The entertainment industry saw an unexpected growth in the year 2020. On-demand services such as Disney+, AppleTV, and Netflix, and Amazon Prime gathered millions of new uses and paid customers to its business.

People also showed an unexpected interest in the virtual simulation of entertainment events such as festivals, live concerts, as well as sports events. One of the biggest events was the AMA which organized and streamed the event completely online. The overall video streaming traffic went up to 12%. On the other hand, online traffic in the case of video games increased by 75%.

People also opted for social gaming and live streaming as they went for some of the exciting interactions at the same time maintaining social distancing.

Healthcare

Healthcare was the most over the extended industry at the time of the pandemic. Adoption of technology became one of the crucial steps in supporting the people, and digital transformation became inevitable. Physicians have claimed to treat patients virtually as people were unable to reach the doctors.

Teledoc, which is one of the largest telemedicine providers, saw a 50% week on week growth as the U.S went on a countrywide lockdown. Additionally, healthcare devices such as wearables, remote diagnostics, health monitoring devices also saw a rapid increase in sales. Tech giants such as Apple and Google came up with new innovations and sustainable health solutions.

Online therapy apps that are subscription-based also saw a great interest from the customers with an increased number of customer subscriptions.

Finance

FinTech solutions were already changing the finance industry even before the pandemic. Services such as contactless payments, online accessibility, mobile banking, and digital payments in the case of insurance and investment services were already put into place. However, the pandemic put everything at the top priority.

Businesses that remained open in the pandemic reported a significant increase in online and contactless payments. Moreover, digital banking also saw an increase in consumer adoption.

Retail   

The system of brick and mortar was severely affected in 2020 as the various governments imposed mandatory lockdowns and social distancing norms. The same situation in the economy accelerated the adoption of e-commerce and online retail as the consumers wanted a safe way to shop.

The sale of online grocery saw a tremendous rise which was only 6% until 2019. Some of the major online markets such as Walmart and Amazon, automated their online order fulfilment to meet the increasing demand.

Online retail is also expected to experience a change with the introduction of augmented reality and virtual reality. The future of retail is seen in the 3D rendering of the stock and virtual recreation in the physical shopping experience.

Today’s technology-friendly market is growing bigger and bigger each day. It is bringing initiation and innovation each day with an unexpected rapid change in consumer behaviour. All these changes are giving rise to some of the most in-demand start-up opportunities.

Source – Forbes