Startup Freak Community for entrepreneurs and small businesses
New age online startups are in search for a repeatable and scalable business model. The goal of the business model can be revenue, or profits, or users, or click-throughs – whatever you and your investors have agreed upon. Startups are quickly iterating and testing their hypotheses and changing their business model multiple times. There is a new surge of innovative online businesses which are becoming unicorns in a blink of an eye, This post aims to cover few business models and verticals of the innovative startups that are getting the eyeballs of the world.
Types of Online startups across Horizontals / Business Models
1. Marketplace (for Services / products / professionals) –
An online marketplace where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties, whereas transactions are processed by the marketplace operator. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce.
In an online marketplace, consumer transactions are processed by the marketplace operator and then delivered and fulfilled by the participating retailers or wholesalers (often called drop shipping).
Since 2014, online marketplaces are abundant since organized marketplaces are sought after. Some have a wide variety of general interest products that cater to almost all the needs of the consumers, however, some are consumer specific and cater to a particular segment only. Not only is the platform for selling online, but the user interface and user experience matters. People tend to log on to online marketplaces that are organized and products are much more accessible to them. Online marketplaces for services and outsourcing – There are marketplaces for the online outsourcing of professional services like IT services, search engine optimization, marketing, crowdsourcing, and skilled crafts & trades work.
Examples of online marketplaces Amazon.com, Alibaba, eBay, etsy, Flipkart, Snapdeal.
2. Enablers (Coupons / comparisons / analytics / logistic / delivery sites) –
Multichannel retailing or Omnichannel retailing is a business model that implies using of a variety of channels in a customer’s shopping experience including research before a purchase. Such channels include retail stores, online stores, mobile stores, mobile app stores, telephone sales and any other method of transacting with a customer. Transacting includes browsing, buying, returning as well as pre-sale and after-sale service.
Omnichannel retailing is the use of all physical channels (offline) and digital channels (online) which offers a seamless, innovative and unified customer experience. Omni comes from the Latin “omnis” which means “every/all” and channels refers to the method in which consumers interact with the company
Examples – Coupondunia, Cashkaro, Delhivery, compare hatke etc
3. Aggregators of reviews / sellers / buyers / service providers etc / listing websites –
Aggregator refers to a web site or computer software that aggregates a specific type of information from multiple online sources. Like Deal, coupon aggregator, Cabs / Hotels / News / Review / Search / content aggregators
Examples – Uber / zomato / tripadvisor / hotels.com
4. Platforms for discovery / learning / selling / buying / renting etc –
you can safely ignore 80%+ of the people in the world today who are using the term “platform” and don’t know what it means. A platform-enabled website is a website in which additional functionality can be seamlessly integrated by means of an external application programming interface (API). The platform should provide integration points. These integration points are places in the application where new functionality can be plugged in.
A Level 1 platform’s apps run elsewhere, and call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services — this is how Flickr does it. A Level 2 platform’s apps run elsewhere, but inject functionality into the platform via a plug-in API — this is how Facebook does it. Most likely, a Level 2 platform’s apps also call into the platform via a web services API to draw on data and services. A Level 3 platform’s apps run inside the platform itself — the platform provides the “runtime environment” within which the app’s code runs.
Example – A virtual learning environment (VLE), or learning platform, is an electronic educational technology (also called e-learning) education system based on the Web that models conventional in-person education by providing equivalent virtual access to classes, class content, tests, homework, grades and assessments
Innovation type (tech/ biz model) across verticals –
1. IOT – The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data
2. Gaming – cross platform mobile game development, Video game development.
3. Saas – Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.
4. Mobile Apps – A mobile app is a computer program designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Most such devices are sold with several apps bundled as pre-installed software, such as a web browser, email client, calendar, mapping program, and an app for buying music or other media or more apps. Mobile native apps stand in contrast to software applications that run on desktop computers, and to web applications which run in mobile web browsers rather than directly on the mobile device.
5. Tech of “x” – biz model– Health tech, Fintech, Agritech, Edutech, food tech, adtech, media tech,
6. eGov, Smart Infra, Security Infra – Products built for giving citizens a better life. Smart cities is the new buzzword in the Indian infrastructure and development space. Innovation in public transport, safety and security services, environmental sensors etc
If you have most to add to these, please comment and share your feedback in the comment section below!
