The most terrible forecasts were not justified. Many startups came to pre-crisis indicators and adapted to a new reality, and venture capitalists began to actively invest and look into the future. Let's try to look into it and we.
"There is no special wayIt is always interesting to talk about the future, but it is difficult to make forecasts. Bill Gates in the book "Business at the speed of thought" wrote: "We always overestimate the changes that will occur in the next two years, and underestimate the changes in the next ten years." The venture capitalist primarily is a visionary who should look at the horizon of 3-5 years, guessing the changes that happens, and in the second place to be an adviser to help start to achieve their goals.
If we talk about a special future path for Russian investors, then he is generally the same as in foreign. They may only have global prospects: if you invest in a truly successful company, with a very high probability, it should become global.
The exception is a small class of industries that are capable of making a large company on the local market. First of all, it is all related to retail and consumer business, as well as classic markets, such as minerals. The overwhelming majority of truly large Russian companies operate in retail business, in mining of minerals or energy. In Russia, more than 100 million Internet users are enough to build a large asset in the consumer market. Investing into other companies, you need to think about the global market.
New realityFrom the most promising technologies for investments, first of all, it is worth paying attention to VR and AR. This is a very important direction of technology and business models. According to IDC forecasts, AR / VR expenses can grow 6 times - up to $ 72.8 billion in 2024. The most popular technology will be in the consumer sector - games, video content; In the commercial segment - training, maintenance in industry, retail trade. We will soon see and IOS, Windows and Android, oriented under the helmets of virtual and augmented reality. I think that in 10 years, mobile phones in their hands will become a thing very rare, if at all there will remain there.
We will see an increasing number of different electric vehicles, including electric vehicles, which in the near future will be equated at cost and, therefore, accessibility with classic cars. But this area of investment is already super-perocented, and I expect many disappointments in this area, including lost investments.
We will see a large number of robots on the roads, what is called Moving Vehicles, which are already exploited today (for example, StarShip startup). Delivery of the last mile robot of this kind will be an absolutely common phenomenon in large cities. This is already becoming a reality. Most recently, Yandex. Hand began to deliver food with the help of a robot in Moscow and Innopolis, in Arizon FedEx uses his Sameday Bot robot. The robotics of this class will be in our daily life, and the investment in it and robots will pay off. There will be many solutions in the field of autonomous transport, including in the field of software platforms in this class of solutions.
The next direction that will appear after a large number of autonomous driving, walking, flying devices is the transition from a cloud era to EDGE-technologies and EDGE-calculations, when the bulk of the calculation will be made not in the cloud, but on the final device. Interest in the boundary computing (edge computing) is among Russian IT managers, many have already used these technologies. Accordingly, various EDGE platforms should appear, EDGE - operating systems so that all this variety of various devices can interact with each other. While such EDGE platforms are created, but this is the question of the next 5-7 years, and I think that these systems will also be very in demand.
Russian high-tech Deeptech companies have good chances to succeed in this direction. Robotics in Russia is very seriously developed, at least human resources - there are opportunities for a breakthrough in this area.
The figure teaches and treatsFinally, an area associated with bioengineering and genetics and bioprogramming - Biotech. This is also a sphere that will evolve very quickly. Already at the end of this year, the world of biotech shows a huge growth - a record IPO for $ 9.4 billion and, of course, the increased interest of investors to this area. Venture Fundraising in Healthcare took off to $ 10.4 billion in the first half of 2020 - almost as a record 2019. In my opinion, in Biotehe, we will also see a lot of interesting decisions, startups, and I advise you to observe this area.
Here I turn on both the Agropro, because there are a lot of tasks related to it will be solved with bioengineering and IoT - these two things will affect the so-called Agrotech.
Separately, it is worth talking about online and digital transformation. Here are two high-precantial spheres: digital medicine, that is, everything related to the digitalization of ordinary medical services, and digital education.
Neither in the first nor in the second sphere there are not even outlined explicit leaders. Because today, no one managed to make a truly qualitative solution in the field of digital education, and this is what people will invest, trying to make digital projects of this kind scalable. In this industry there is a lot of money, in Edtech today more than $ 6 trillion, and growth. Medicine is still very poorly digitized, and solutions such as telemedicine will appear and develop in a very rapid pace. Pandemic and self-insulation accelerated the development of this direction. According to Global Market Insights, the global digital health market last year exceeded $ 106 billion. And in the future, it was predicted to $ 657 billion for five years. But taking into account new circumstances, it can be assumed that the figure will be even more. Investors' interest is already obvious - in the first quarter of 2020, venture capital investments in the startups of digital healthcare accounted for $ 3.1 billion - 1.5 times more than a year earlier.
Finally, the boom associated with the blockchain in 2017-2018. And which, as it seems, has exhausted himself, will lead to the fact that the technology will be seriously distributed. We too overestimated those changes that the blockchain can give in the near future, and I think, we underestimate the changes that it will bring when this technology will be accepted by a large number of industries. In particular, in Fintech, the blockchain can seriously press both traditional stockies and traditional calculations and banks. According to some forecasts, the blockchain market will reach $ 21 billion in five years, while three years ago it was $ 1.64 billion. It is obvious that in the near future we will see not one successful blockchain-project in the field of finance, logistics, toochenization assets, etc.
I think this is enough to dedicate your time and money in the development of these areas. The next 10 years should be very interesting from the point of view of the development of startups and technologies. Of course, I did not mention the space, which will probably be conquered, but after 2030
The author's opinion may not coincide with the position of the VTIMES edition.