Tag: mobile usage

In 2013, two American graduate school dropouts started a car-rental business in India with seven vehicles. Now, two years later, the company has a fleet of 1,800 cars. A seeming success by anyone’s standards, and for Western consumers, a seemingly traditional business: car rental. One more detail: the company, Zoomcar, is an internet startup, meaning users make reservations online or via a mobile application, then pick up the vehicles at numerous locations, or have them delivered to their doorsteps. Zoomcar illustrates how a growing number of startups do not rely on the kind of high-tech, often hard-to-understand technology requiring years of development. Increasingly, internet startups seek to disrupt markets rather than disrupt technology itself – and many are seeing wild success. According to a recent list from the Wall Street Journal, five of the top ten unicorns (tech startups valued at more than $1 billion) fit this category. And they can be great investments, offering opportunities to capitalize on the ever-changing (and sometimes for newcomers, intimidating) tech sector. The most well-known standouts in this sector include online accommodation marketplace...