Business

Winners and Losers in the Digital Economy

Published

1 month ago

September 20, 2020

Businesses around the world were forced to move to an online economy due to the COVID 19 pandemic. However, not all businesses will be able to make that shift and thrive. If you deep dive and take a look at the digital economy, you will discover winners as well as losers. Let’s take a look at some of the winners and losers.

Winners of digital economy

Telecommunication companies

Online services are quite popular among people out there. That’s because, we use our internet connections and phones to get most of our work done. Due to the same reason, companies that offer internet and telephone services have a high demand. Telecommunication companies can expect to witness an increase in demand for the services in future. Hence, they are a clear winner of an online economy.

Software development companies

People in today’s world prefer to use online platforms to get most of their work done. For example, we take a look at the online stores when we want to buy something. It is a convenient method available to get a product delivered without having to go out. To cater this demand, businesses have started getting their online selling marketplaces developed. Numerous improvements are done to those online marketplaces to deliver a better experience to the customers. On the other hand, digital economy has forced employees and students to continue with their work from home. This has also created a massive demand for the services offered by software development companies. Hence, software development companies are a clear winner of the online economy.

When you go through IB Economics Paper 1 Sample Answers, you will figure out how the businesses can thrive when they have an increased demand. All the businesses that belong to the above-mentioned industries have a high demand. Hence, they can get the maximum returns out of digital economy.

Losers of online economy

Now you have a clear understanding about the winners of online economy. While keeping that in mind, it is worthy to take a look at the losers of online economy as well. Here are some of the businesses that will probably take advantage out of digital economy to ensure their business success.

Businesses in the hospitality industry

Businesses that exist in the hospitality industry, such as hotels, theme parks and even airlines will fail to thrive in a digital economy. They operate businesses, which cannot be taken online with ease. Along with the development of a digital economy, most of the people prefer to stay at their homes and get work done. This is creating a negative impact to the businesses in hospitality industry. That’s because those industries need people to move.

For example, we can see how the large scale conferences, trade shows and exhibition are now taking place online in the form of online conferences and virtual trade shows. This has led the companies in hospitality industry towards major revenue drops. As you can learn from Econs Tuition, businesses that have a drop in demand will not be able to sustain in the future, unless they go for transformations. However, the transformations available for businesses in the hospitality industry are also limited, due to the nature of business operations that they run.

Child care services / adult care services

Child care services and adult care services are another loser in an online economy. We could see how these businesses receive lots of financial support during the recent past because of the impact created by COVID 19 pandemic. They are experiencing a significant drop in their revenues as of now. Some of the operators are even forced to close down their facilities.

In a digital economy, people are provided with the chance to get most of their work done while staying at home. For example, people don’t need to go to office to get work done. Due to the same reason, they can work from home and take care of their kids and seniors. This leads all the businesses that offer adult care services and child care services to lost business opportunities.

Final words

As you can see, there are winners and losers in a digital economy. Losers should focus more on how to get the maximum out of new business opportunities created with the online economy. Then they will be able to innovate and ensure the survival of businesses in the long run.

Business

Vurbl Makes Noise with Investor Lineup and $1 million in Pre-Seed Funding

Published

2 days ago

October 28, 2020

Matthew Wiles

A new audio streaming platform is coming to town. Vurbl is set to shake things up as the company goes head to head with other popular platforms like Apple and Spotify. The goal of the platform is to become the “YouTube of Audio.”

Vurbl is a creator-first, free streaming audio platform for all audio types, including user generated audio. Similar to YouTube, Vurbl allows content creators to upload, earn subscribers and monetize their work. Vurbl will provide listeners that are looking to connect with new voices and information with personalized playlists and stations across 40 categories.

Recently, Vurbl’s CEO and co-founder, Audra Everett Gold, completed its pre-seed round closing at $1.3 million. The round was led by AlphaEdison, a knowledge-driven VC firm that invests in early-stage companies. Vurbl also attracted other investors including Halogen Ventures, TEN13, Angelist and other businesses within the audio, advertisement and entertainment industries.

Nick Grouf, managing partner at AlphaEdison stated, “We believe Vurbl is opening up an entirely new audio market for listeners, creators and brands. This platform has the potential to change the way we consume audio on the internet and the timing is spot on. If anyone can pull this off this enormous opportunity, it’s the team at Vurbl.”

Gold launched Vurbl at the beginning of the year and once COVID-19 hit, the team opt-ed to work from home to stay safe and healthy. Gold and her team then doubled-down to develop Vurbl’s platform. Gold single handedly embarked on a journey to gain investor interest and secured funding during the pandemic mostly by way of Zoom calls.

The pre-seed funds are being used to develop and launch the Vurbl platform with over 25 million pieces of audio and podcasts. This will span across hundreds of categories and subcategories creating a sanctuary for content curators and listeners.

Gold is confident in the market demand for a streaming platform like Vurbl and stated, “Audio is scattered all over the internet in hard to find places, much of it costs money or is not findable, is not easy to playback, etc. We see millions of audio queries on Google and YouTube that reflect demand for audio of all types. The vast majority of these searches return subpar audio results or no audio results at all.”

Vurbl is uniquely positioned to win over audio aficionados with its promise of value added services and attractive revenue share program for creators.

Vurbl is set to launch its web-based platform experience in Q4 2020 with millions of discoverable audio, playlists and human-curated audio stations. The company also plans to announce additional updates including the launch of new mobile apps, a downloadable desktop app, and connected in-home devices for listeners to enjoy audio streams anytime and anywhere.