As COVID-19 has shocked businesses and societies in the world, companies have had to make changes in order to survive. Others who did not consider important having a digital strategy, now dip into it to maintain the continuity of their business. For those who did not migrate completely yet -during these times full of changes, new measures for living, studying and working- realized digitalization is key.
“This crisis has helped to underline the crucial role that technology plays in so many aspects of society and the economy”- Tom Wehmeier, Head of Research in Atomico.
Startups who have been working online all along, have confirmed they have not found difficulties during COVID-19. The future is already here and those who have not adopted digital tools yet, need to update for the demand of today since most people have been staying at home and ordering online more than before. Therefore, online stores have increased their earnings. Nowadays, businesses need to be ready to respond to the demand.
Dealroom.co and Sifted.eu, supported by the European Commission, presented a two years report “What does it take. Europe´s startup ecosystem navigating the COVID-19 crisis”, which sets the scene to provide a health check of the continent’s startup ecosystem looking at the impact of coronavirus. The report indicates that freelancers could benefit from remote working as would luruxy ecommerce. And startups as online groceries, food delivery, meal kits, collaboration software, telehealth, biotech, online education, streaming music/video and gaming are structural and cyclical positive, so they have more chances to keep their businesses running well and for a long time.
“At Crisp we experienced a surge in demand for delivery of fresh groceries: we’ve managed to triple in size in one month time. Digital adoption has definitely accelerated among households. The challenge is to manage growth, in a more volatile environment”- Tom Peeters, Co-founder & CEO Crisp.nl
Another report made by Dealroom and Google Finance shows a chart with different industries and how COVID-19 has affected converting startups into winners and losers:
We checked in with some startups from different industries to gain some insights on how they are dealing with corona. Keep reading if you want to know more about their experiences.
Online businesses
Pepperfield and DeMonth, semi-finalists of Present Your Startup Alkmaar 2020, have online strategies and they both have kept their businesses going very well during this corona times.
Pepperfield from The Netherlands: young fast-growing web hosting provider. They take over small web hosting providers. These small providers often have a hard time or they have very high costs, making them unprofitable. Sometimes, they do not have the technical knowledge required or it just takes the owners too much time. Maarten Strootman, CEO and founder of this startup, stated that now self-employed professionals and small business are finally aware that online business is a crucial part of their strategy, as they cannot rely on only their social network (i.e. the coffee machine) and small talk in the elevator for scoring their next assignment. Maarten said:
“They need to have an online strategy. At Pepperfield we see an increasing demand in support and new orders. We see people finally perform the overdue maintenance on their websites or launching new online initiatives to stay ahead of the competition. The Corona-crisis is the last blockade that held back the breakthrough of ecommerce. We help self-employed professionals and small businesses be successful online. Our customers are good in their business. We know a lot about doing business online. That's a great combination”.
DeMonth from The Netherlands: online platform where women can get their menstrual and sustainable femcare products delivered to their doorstep or in their mailbox. Max de Groot, one of the founders of this startup said:
“Business is still good for DeMonth. Since we are fully online and not dependent on store visits we can still sell and deliver our product! Right now we are neither feeling a explosive positive or a negative effect of the situation. We are still growing and sales keep coming in”.
Airchip from The Netherlands: Solves waiting lines by rethinking the way people order and pay at events. Over the last 10 months, Airchip gained hands-on experience working with Bluetooth. And since events are not allowed until September 1st, they are working on the tech side to see what to come up with.
Now this startup wants to share their code and knowledge to help fight the spread of the Coronavirus. In the field, they got to two conclusions: The signal strength of Bluetooth is a bad indicator for close proximity and the big data analysis needs to be corrected for device and mobile phone operating system variations.
Airchip, along with 600 companies applied for the Dutch government Covid-app tender, where everybody needed to prove technical excellence in days. Jan ten Kate, one of the founders of Airchip said:
“We strongly believe that our knowledge, experience and data could be of great value to the selected app developers, many of whom do not have any proven experience in the field of Bluetooth. We will gladly offer our insights and open source our codebase to whomever wants to help solve this crisis”.
Onechat bv from The Netherlands: One stop mobile payment platform for consumers and merchants that supports E-money, cards and instant payments. For consumers is one app for all everyday payments: Person to person transfers, M-commerce and in store purchases, communication tool. For merchants is increase sales, unique app in app feature that allows your store to be integrated right into the consumers app. Olaf Groenewegen, co-founder of this startup said:
“We are with ten full time employees, looking for angels now, it’s not as easy as before, we could have meetings in person, now everything needs to be online, but our idea has had angels and it has attractive capital. We have established a partnership with a company in Serbia and we are currently working on a pilot”.
Healthcare
Healsens from The Netherlands: Personalized preventive care designed to integrate your medical information into the longer course of life. Anna Barzakouskaya, CEO and founder, said that the current situation has had a positive impact on her business:
“First, quarantine and home isolation allowed us to focus on development and we have made great progress with our solution. Second, many people turned their attention to medical decisions, and it brought new interesting people to the project and new opportunities. Despite the fact that Healsens solution specializes in trans missive diseases (mainly chronic ones and those related to aging), our models could help with forecasting and diagnosing COVID-19 infection as well. Therefore, we respond with great interest to offers from different organizations that ask help with the global challenge”.
Nursability from Aruba: Offering outreaching, high-quality, high-attention healthcare to tourists, short-term residents and local residents wherever and whenever they want. Kimberly Hoo, founder of this business said before the target was tourists, but because of corona, there are no more visitors. Nonetheless, Nursability has grown right now in the local market:
“I thought this would have a huge effect on the company, but since I have expanded my team and offered new services I actually got new clients. Hopefully it will keep increasing and – when tourists are back on the island – we will have mire services to offer them as well. For Nursability it is important to digitalize because it would accommodate so many people. They would not have to leave their house to search for care. With a click of a button they can get all their questions answered through an online session”.
It will not be the same scenario for every startup, but let’s not forget some entrepreneurs will come up with great ideas and projects to keep their business going or improve it, or maybe they will create something new. In the past, some investors also see opportunities during hard times, when the entrepreneur’s commitment and concept is genuinely put to the test. This time it will not be the exception.
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References
Dealroom.co. Impact of the Corona crisis on startups & tech:
https://blog.dealroom.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Corona-vFINAL.pdf
EuropeanStartups.co by Dealroom.co. + Sifted:
https://blog.dealroom.co/what-does-it-take-european-startups-stepping-up-to-global-tech-leadership/
Written by Claudia Flores Jiménez
Comments, questions, suggestions to: claudia@innovate.today
