Coming up with innovative startup ideas is quite a challenge. Whenever you think of a fantastic app idea, you’ll probably see that some of the renowned tech enterprises have already built it.
But innovativeness is not the only criteria your tech venture should meet. To raise enough investment and ensure your product fits the market demand, your software has to be reliable, functional, and most importantly, address a real-life problem. In this context, building a tech-for-good startup might seem a good option. By leveraging the power of new technologies, you have all the chances to create a useful product that will improve your customers’ lives worldwide and solve a solid list of social issues.
What is tech for good, why it will become a leading trend in 2021 and how to build a product that will resonate with your audience ― we have all these questions answered in our article.
What is Tech For Good?
Before we get down to market analysis and uncovering new opportunities tech for good carries for their founders, let’s cover the basics:
Tech-for-good software leverages tech advancements to build software solutions that aid in solving an important social, environmental or economic problem.
Tech-for-good companies examine the factors that may affect social issues and find ways to use innovation to minimize their effect on society or a particular community. Today, it’s not only a means for social problem solving but a big business with a general value of £2.42bn for 2019. And it’s only in the UK.
Thus, by building tech for good, you bring a highly demanded product to the market while preserving social responsibility and promoting it among your partners.
Establishing a Tech-For-Good Startup in 2021
Along with the sense of virtue from establishing a socially responsible company, you open up a wide range of investment and funding opportunities that may be inaccessible to startups that limit their business plans to financial pursuits.
Bethal Green Ventures is one of Europe’s venture capital firms that provides early-stage startups with investment opportunities. The Tech for Good program aims to support founders who strive to build socially responsible companies. They already have funded numerous companies willing to find new use cases for IT advancements and may provide your venture with considerable support in bringing your idea to the market quickly and efficiently.
Regardless of the niche and industry, tech for good makes your company stand out by providing it with a clear and meaningful mission, which resonates with your audience, press and investors. Especially in times of the pandemic, it is essential to look for ways to use technology for social change.
Technology as a Solution
Healthcare
With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, it becomes clear that our healthcare system is fragile. The entire world has seemed to stop at once just because we happen to combat a new virus. But it meant one thing: we need to take proactive measures.
One of the most notable efforts to solve healthcare issues is Lifted. It’s an online platform that offers support and personalized at-home care for older people. Users can interact with care-givers through an app where all the essential notes, visit records, and payments will occur. You may feel no difference between physical visits and telehealth. 76% of US hospitals already use this technology. Anyway, “fast and effective” is how Lifted can be described.
Technologies can also aid humanity in the battle called “Covid-19.” With the help of AI, the team at Google DeepMind has created a high-tech system called AlphaFold. It predicts the protein structure from the amino-acid sequence. So what? It advances scientific research and the process of finding drugs and vaccines.
Besides, let us remind you about automated temperature monitoring and face recognition. These technologies are high-performing means in supporting social distancing and cutting back virus outburst.
Climate Change
Climate change has that overarching universal effect. The air and water pollution, global warming, and natural disasters unite every existing country since we consume the same water and breathe the same air.
It was predicted that permissible 4 billion tons of annual emissions of carbon dioxide would morph to 15 billion by 2050 or even earlier. Such figures are terrifying. If global warming continues to progress, we are likely to see stagnation of other environmental issues, which might cause irreparable harm to flora and fauna.
Therefore, technology can help to ameliorate the situation with increased polluting in myriad ways. How? Electric cars, alternative sources of energy, non-polluting air conditioning systems mark the first steps of humanity towards a better and prosperous future. Besides, some countries have already generated plans on how to use more complex technological solutions to this social problem.
One of the instances is vacuuming gas from the atmosphere. It was decided to apply direct air capture (DAC) technology to this type of a social problem. Giant cleaners remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, then, recirculate it underground or supply it to industries that use CO2 for fertilizers or making bubbles for beverages. Hence, this technology purifies the air, allowing us to breathe freely and decrease the pace of global warming.
Technology can also ensure equal opportunities for all candidates. AI-powered recruiting software is widely applied to combat descrimination at the workplace and boost diversity rates in companies across all sectors. Smart algorithms help to ensure the candidate is selected based on his/her knowledge and skills rather than background.
Digital platforms make education more accessible to minorities and disabled people. For instance, Chatterbox is a language learning platform designed to meet the needs of refugees. This AI-powered software connects users with shared learning interests and allows them to gain a win-win benefit from this interaction. According to McKinsey, this project had a positive impact on social well-being as it enables users to gain the required skills to reclaim their professional identities.
Education
Inequality in education has put its roots so deeply that bright individuals from developing countries have to bury the potential
of their brains under a rock. But with the help of social implication of technology, people can access the versatility of sources of information. Online courses, e-books, a variety of educational apps open the door to the world of knowledge.
Moreover, what we also acquire because of innovative technologies is the reformation of the educational system. When children started school in the past, they tended to learn a massive amount of the data. But today, the learning environment is dramatically different.
It’s more interactive and flexible, and technologies play a vital role in such a change. They provide instruments such as video projector, VR devices, infographic constructors, presentations, managers such as Google Classroom, and so on. As a result, it simplifies information processing.
World Hunger
There is 11 percent of the global population who go to bed hungry not because of a diet but because they are totally run out of food. It is more than 800 million people who suffer from hunger. And this number is constantly growing. It means that now, we need to mull over the idea of applying technologies to increase food production, and, consequently, transform it into a technology solution to this social problem.
‘Smart farming’ technologies have already become a vital part of many farms and agricultural companies. They include drones and sensors to help farmers effectively interact with the ever-changing natural environment. Precisely, the internet of things solution or IoT solutions such as drone-mounted and in-field sensors are means for measuring and monitoring crop health to decrease the number of damaged food products. ‘Smart farming’ solutions are also effective for livestock monitoring and soil and water management.
Besides, the data collected by IoT would allow scientists to distribute food supplies properly. Consequently, it plays a vital role in eliminating world hunger.
Wrapping Up
Tech-for-good startups have become top-of-mind for many investors and venture capitalists. It is not a niche but rather a framework that allows businesses to build a global mindset and develop products that facilitate positive change for people and our planet.
If you’ve been struggling with building your software product or have any questions concerning its implementation, contact LITSLINK, a top software development company, and scale your business to new heights.