Businesses must contend with all manner of variables in order to achieve success. Their leadership team, product-market fit and financial management – among other things – all play a part in ensuring that it survives and progresses. In some cases, however, variables outside of a business’s control can mean the difference between expanding and closing doors. This was particularly true with the COVID-19 pandemic when the lifestyles of millions of Americans changed overnight and, in turn, impacted a number of industries.
But not everyone was impacted the same. Read on for five unique business sectors that saw an increase in popularity due to the pandemic.
Edtech
When stay-at-home orders were implemented in early 2020, educational institutions at every level were forced to transition to remote learning – whether or not they were prepared. As a result, many businesses in the edtech space that focus on enhancing the teaching and learning experience saw an increase in adoption, as teachers and students looked for ways to make the best of online instruction. This change drove a nearly 30 percent increase in edtech investments in 2020 compared to the previous year.
Healthtech
The coronavirus put a spotlight on healthcare, especially in the United States, where there have been more COVID-19 cases than any other part of the world. As hospitals prioritized coronavirus patients, many Americans turned to telemedicine and remote care to meet their health needs, with nearly 70 percent likely to continue to use telemedicine services, according to a 2020 Gallup poll.
E-Commerce
With COVID-19 spreading through airborne transmission, many consumers avoided brick-and-mortar retailers in favor of online shopping. In fact, an April 2020 survey conducted by Statista found that 74 percent of respondents were willing to use online grocery platforms to avoid trips to the grocery store. Whether it was household supplies, groceries or restaurant delivery, consumers chose online ordering over in-person shopping more often as a result of the pandemic.
Remote Work Software
As millions of Americans transitioned to working from home, many of the software applications that make remote work possible saw a marked increase in popularity, according to a recent Business Insider report. Zoom, the video conferencing tool, saw its stock quadruple in 2020, and went from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million just four months later. And Slack, the work messaging platform that went public just shy of a year before the start of the pandemic, was recently acquired by Salesforce for nearly $28 billion.
Home Improvement
Statewide lockdowns meant that many homeowners and their children would be home every hour of the day. With this new lifestyle change, Americans turned to home improvement retailers for supplies to create makeshift office spaces, address long-ignored home projects and generally make their homes more suitable for living, learning and working under one roof. This surge gave many home improvement retailers unprecedented sales boosts, according to an NPR report, including Home Depot, which saw a 23.4 percent increase in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same quarter in 2019.
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Main Graphic: Julie Kennedy