Business Trends and Opportunities in India for 2021

Usually, every year the business trends and opportunities evolve from the previous years. But this year the change will be disruptive because of the pandemic. COVID is one of the most prominent Black Swan events of our times. It has changed consumer patterns and behaviours. Thus, creating disruptive trends and opportunities.

Here are the top business trends and opportunities for 2021 that every entrepreneur should know,

Update: These business trends may be listed in 2021 but still are relevant. You can find more opportunities in our list of business trends for 2022.

Digital Banking and Financial Services

Online payment and UPI transactions have grown significantly, especially post demonetisation. Users have become open to digital payment. This started the boom of Fintech in India.

Besides digital wallets and UPI apps, new ventures are providing various types of financial services online. Some products are offering instant loans through an app like Lazypay, Moneytap and more. Apps like Groww are helping users manage their investments online. Cred is helping users manage all their credit card payments through a single app. Cred has also added new features like credit line into their platform.

One of the biggest players in Fintech, Razorpay, is providing a set of banking services through digital mediums to Small and Medium companies. Razorpay provides a business dashboard to manage complete banking of any business. They also provide instant working capital loans and aspire to become the new-age digital bank for businesses.

Digital platforms, and technology are revolutionizing banking services. We would expect far more online financial services this year. There will be a lot of innovation on the bank-side as well.

As per Avtar Monga, COO of IDFC Bank says, “Digital will help us redefine the boundaries of banking.” Through technology, IDFC looks to provide better banking experience to customers.

There are still a lot of opportunities to digitise financial services, to launch new digital financial services, and to innovate existing products.

Health Care Tech

The one industry that shook because of the pandemic was Healthcare. Most of the healthcare system and infrastructure had fallen. In a short period, we saw a complete change in setup and infrastructure of healthcare.

All regular checkups started happening through video conferencing. The prescription and instructions were shared through Whatsapp. And the medicines were delivered at home by the local pharmacist or through apps like Netmeds or Dunzo.

This created opportunities for new products and features. Practo had started scheduling online appointments with doctors. They went a step ahead and launched a special membership program, where a user gets a certain number of consultations every month.

Tech has also enabled better and faster R&D in medicines and healthcare. Stanford University researchers have trained an algorithm to diagnose skin cancer using deep learning, The algorithm detects skin cancer using “130,000 images of skin lesions representing over 2,000 different diseases.”

We plan to see multiple innovations and solutions in healthcare that will simplify the consultation services with the doctor, improve diagnosis, and boost the development of drugs and vaccines. And schemes like NDHM will further elevate the industry.

Automation

With technologies like big data, ML, and AI, a lot of things and processes around us are getting automated. One of the few early sectors to get automated was customer service through chatbots. The adoption of the chatbot has exploded in the last few years. The market for chatbot itself is about to reach 102 billion by 2025.

One of the major players, Automation Anywhere, has deployed 2.6M bots worldwide. The biggest advantages of automation are an increase in productivity and a drop in error rate.

Platforms like IFTTT have enabled us to automate our daily processes through open web hooks. It connects many devices and lets them interact with each other.

In the next set of innovations in automation, we expect advanced automation in manufacturing plants, self-drive cars, semi-automated labour services, and more.

All business processes are going to see some level of automation. Even a lot of consumer activities will get automated. There is a huge scope as tech is getting ready to automate almost everything around us.

Rise of Native Language 

India has over 500 million internet users and over 450 million smartphone users. It has over 100 major languages and about 1600 dialects.

With further expansion of Jio in the market, lower network cost, and launch of 5G we expect tremendous growth in smartphone users in 2021. 90% of users are estimated to prefer content in their local language.

As per a Google Report, by next year India’s Hindi internet user base will overtake the English-language users. Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi users will account for 75% of Indian internet users.

Thus, there is a vast market for platforms delivering services in local languages. Seeing the same trend Google and Microsoft have recently invested 100 million dollars on Daily Hunt, one of India’s biggest local language platforms.

There are a lot of opportunities in providing users with content and services in their native language.

Hyperlocal Services

Hyperlocal is a market where buyer and seller are in the same locality. And hyperlocal services are booming in India.

There is a vast market for on-demand services like Grocery, Food, Medicines, Grocery, and more. The hyperlocal is not only restricted to the above services. There is even an opportunity for other hyperlocal services like knowledge and information.

Apps like Swiggy and OLA were the first steps in delivering hyperlocal services in India. With time, we have seen the market expanding and entry of new players in the market. Today, we have high valued startups like Dunzo, Shiprocket, Shadowfax, and more in this space.

As the internet reach will expand in India, the demand for hyperlocal services will increase and users will prefer products from their favourite nearby place in quick time.

The opportunity is two sided – one building a platform for providing hyperlocal services to users like Dunzo or enabling these products to implement seamless hyperlocal delivery. For eg – last-mile delivery platform Shadowfax.

Electric Cars

After over 12 years of launch, Tesla is finally launching in India. As per Nitin Gadkari and Elon Musk, Tesla models will be available in India from mid-2021.

This launch will amplify the ecosystem and growth of the electric cars’ market. Currently, there are a lot of automakers who have launched an electric version of their cars in India. A few of them are promoting the hybrid version.

But, there is no electronic car, only brand available. And with the flamboyant personality of Elon Musk, electric cars will become a piece of pride and aspirations.

Thus, it will increase opportunities for electric cars in India and for setting up the infrastructure for electric cars like charging stations and more. India already has its version of Tesla called Ather Energy, who has launched smart electric scooters. They have also set up charging stations in cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, and Hyderabad. With Tesla’s launch in India, we expect more startups innovating this sector in various ways.

Adding to this the following booming industries will further grow and increase in terms of users and valuation 

• Edtech
• Voice Assistant 
• Fitness & Wellness 
• Logistics 

Hope you found some ideas for yourself after reading all the business trends and opportunities areas for 2021. 

Read More: Business Trends 2022

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