POST COVID-19: THE SIGNIFICANT GROWTH OF EDTECH (3)
While EdTech solutions in digital learning were only an alternative till now, they have now become an indispensable part of the education system. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the EdTech sector will witness significant growth.
To aid classroom learning and make education more meaningful for students, schools and EdTech companies should join hands. Schools should steadily adopt online learning solutions coupled with the traditional classroom approach. Digital solutions such as flipped classroom, which focuses on student engagement, active learning and learning management systems, and creates a collaborative learning environment and keeps all stakeholders, including teachers, parents, and students connected, will make learning more inclusive.
POST COVID-19: THE SIGNIFICANT GROWTH OF EDTECH (4)
When things return to normal post-COVID-19, the education industry is likely to be driven by EdTech platforms, making education more accessible to students. Such solutions ensure that students learn, despite any hindrance, and even when they are not able to go to school. Moreover, digital platforms are a blessing for teachers to make learning more interesting and inclusive and carry out academic tasks with much ease. And once again Ritva’s long-term strategy proves itself as an invincible plan for our countless profit in the upcoming years.
Commission rates have decreased dramatically since the late 1990s with the advent of online trading, which has made an impact on the earnings for commodity brokers. However, well-operated commodity brokers remain enormously profitable. To this day, brokering still attracts great interest.
As if it is the nature of any lucrative business, the newcomers more often than not struggle to keep its foot in the game. Freshman brokers have to build up their own portfolio, and this takes quite some time. While some can survive the initial economic pain of low earnings, others become frustrated and leave the business. To be able to survive and prevail, one should first acquire an education in the commodities and futures business, and then a sales effort to attract customers.
Brokers who have got over the hump of starting a business and have built a reasonable portfolio can make a better than average income, ranging anywhere between $30,000 and $70,000 each year.
If a company employs these brokers, let’s say only a handful of them, the average income will be around half a million per year. What if the company cooperates with experienced IBs and also has its own in-house IBs like Ritva? We only can say the income is unimaginable.
COVID-19 WILL FUEL THE NEXT WAVE OF INNOVATION (1)
Adapting ourselves to the new life post-Covid-19, both psychologically and economically, necessitate a non-trivial amount of innovation and changes. Studying over 50 startups that gained scaled around the times of global crises via the lens of this framework clears the mist.
To start off, a recession usually brings about an acceleration in business model change, driving down costs to serve and prices. On the other hand, pandemics tend to enable entirely new categories of businesses. It also becomes quite clear that both pandemics and recessions are accelerants to innovation versus being direct causes of it; i.e. these startups and business ideas were around but gained popularity at a faster rate thanks to a certain black swan event. With these learnings and frameworks in mind, below are three macro innovations we can expect to stick around post-Covid-19.
COVID-19 WILL FUEL THE NEXT WAVE OF INNOVATION (2)
Supply chains will merge into resilient ecosystems
Global supply chains have long been geared towards keeping quality relatively constant while competition keeps costs driving lower at every step. This has resulted in significant concentration risk in terms of geographies and vendors for most companies.
For example, China scaling down due to Covid-19 and creating a knock-on supply impacts what we are seeing today and has exposed the lack of resilience in this approach. There is a sharp need for a more distributed, coordinated and trackable supply of components across multiple geographies and vendors while maintaining economies of scale. This would require global platforms to be erected that use sophisticated technologies such as 5G, robotics, IoT and blockchain to help link multiple buyers with multiple vendors reliably across a ‘mesh’ of supply chains.
This will also have a knock-on impact on the adoption of self-driving cars and delivery drones as the demand for e-commerce logistics will far outstrip the number of drivers needed to fulfill them. The usual B2B platform suspects such as Amazon and Ali Baba are likely to step up and compete for the ownership of this more sophisticated supply chain ecosystem in the next decade.
COVID-19 WILL FUEL THE NEXT WAVE OF INNOVATION (3)
Digital bureaucracies will become mainstream
The Covid-19 breakout has caused government bureaucracies to spin into action quicker than ever before. China broke records by constructing a 645,000 sq. ft hospital in just 10 days in Wuhan. South Korea drove rapid testing of over 200,000 of its citizens and used smartphones to tag the movement of the infected — alerting the non-infected of those movements via real-time updates. All of these efforts, as well as transparency of biological impact, could have been improved if there were more smart cities in the world.
According to the latest study by the University of Glasgow, only 27 out of 5,500 large-sized cities are considered leading in this area. As governments learn from the Covid-19 experience, it will shift investment in favor of smart cities as it would be critical to have them in order better manage the next black swan event. Key players benefiting from this shift in gears would be smart governments, focused companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Siemens as well as digital city startups across Europe and the US.
COVID-19 WILL FUEL THE NEXT WAVE OF INNOVATION (4)
Mental health support will be provided at scale, digitally
It is straight forward to predict that the Covid-19 is going to be an accelerant for remote working as well as online education. What is harder to figure out is what will happen once the majority of the key workforce needs to work together remotely, indefinitely. It is likely that this shift will impact morale, productivity and mental health of workers throughout the globe and businesses need to prepare for it. For companies looking to add the human touch digitally to their workplace, the choices are limited today — with Humu, a startup by ex-google HR chief Laszlo Bock, being in pole position to capitalize on this.
A handful of other tech companies, such as Github and Automattic, which run predominately on a remote collaboration model can also choose to productize their insights and capabilities in order to help other companies cope. For individuals working remotely, things are looking much better. Several mental health startups such as Braive and Moment Pebble can double down on solving the problem of isolation while business networking apps such as Ripple can help solve the mentoring and development challenges that come with being a remote worker.
COVID-19 WILL FUEL THE NEXT WAVE OF INNOVATION (5)
A post-coronavirus world
Covid-19 is a terrible shock to the global economy as well as the thousands of individuals and families it has affected. Companies in the immediate term need to ensure that the health and safety of its workers, partners and suppliers come first. Over the long term, Covid-19 has irrevocably changed the way businesses will compete over the next decade. Firms that choose to capitalize on these underlying changes will succeed and the ones that don’t will get disrupted.
Estonia - One Of The Most Tech-Savvy Societies In The World
Estonia is a tiny country in Northern Europe. Due to its quiet and pacific nature, the Baltic region doesn’t often get too much attention. However, Estonia is by far the most advanced digital society on the planet. The numbers speak for themselves: Taxes are completed online in under 5 minutes, 99 percent of Estonia’s public services are available online 24 hours a day and nearly one-third of citizens vote via the internet.
“We have a generation who has grown up knowing that you communicate digitally with your school because we have an e-school system, with your doctor because of e-health,” Estonia’s president Kersti Kaljulaid told CNBC in an interview in Tallinn in August, 2019. “You could say the Estonian government offers what normally only the private sector can offer to people.”
Estonia’s E-Residency can be deemed as the main key to Estonia’s digital society. This first-of-its-kind initiative allows individuals to start businesses in Estonia regardless of where they physically are. Beyond Estonia, this very initiative serves as a launching pad for companies looking to step into the European Union (EU) market.
This undoubtedly grants an unmatched advantage for “the outsiders”. Estonia E-Residency has received significant interest worldwide, with more than 50,000 applications have been filed and approved since its launch in 2014. Taavi Kotka, Estonia’s first-ever chief information officer summed it up nicely, “People who have global businesses, have a global lifestyle, they want to be served, and we want to be the best ones in that area”.
Estonia’s Digital Nomad Visa - The First Of Its Kind
Estonia is now building on its success with e-Residency to launch a visa for digital nomads; employees who work remotely around the world. The visa is an example of a public-private partnership at work between the Estonian government and Jobbatical, a cross-border hiring firm.
“What we are doing with the digital nomad visa, it really reflects what our whole immigration policy is about,” said Killu Vantsi, a legal migration adviser at the Estonian Ministry of the internal affairs. “We want to attract the talented people, entrepreneurs that are beneficial to our society to our economy.”
Karoli Hindriks, CEO of Jobbatical, said other countries should follow Estonia’s lead as they face aging populations and a lack of skilled workers. “The countries that are closing down and not thinking about it, I’m very curious to see where they will be in 10, 15 years,” she said.
Efforts like e-Residency and the digital nomad visa, along with business-friendly tax rates, have helped encourage a start-up culture in the tiny Baltic nation. Skype, the video chatting service that was bought by Microsoft, was launched in Estonia in 2003.
Today, the government boasts it is home to more tech unicorns, private companies valued at more than $1 billion, per capita than any other small country in the world. Its recent unicorns include payments firm TransferWise and Uber competitor Taxify.
Other companies focusing on everything from blockchain to organic food are now vying to be the next Estonian success.
“The environment they set up right now is really friendly,” said Gregory Lu, co-founder of Natufia Labs, a start-up that created a machine to grow organic produce indoors. “I hope they keep it this way.”
In an attempt to control the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, many European countries have been lockdown totally — meaning that citizens are only allowed outside their house for buying groceries and medicines. However, some countries are deliberately relaxing restrictions.
Reopening EU regions means there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that after weeks of home-restriction, the world will eventually return to normal - even if “normal” looks a little bit different than it used to. The situation would definitely benefit the EU’s economy. “A bit of “cautious optimism” could help consumer confidence. People may make or begin planning purchases they wouldn’t make otherwise.” said Stephen Wu, a professor of economics at Hamilton College.
As a matter of fact, Ritva is located in Estonia, EU and surely can not avoid the effect of a lockdown; however, just a little bit. Indeed, Ritva’s team consistently commits and completes their tasks in an excellent way despite working remotely as a result of their familiarity with technology since their childhood. Even though home-restriction has no effect on the process of Ritva’s earning profit, reopening the continent will offer us a clear and huge opportunity in search of potential start-ups. And honestly, who doesn’t love freedom, right?
Startups across EU have been hit severely by the coronavirus pandemic. Until the crisis is over, survival has to be the imperative focus for startups. Fortunately, on April 15th, United Tech of Europe, which is basically a coalition of national, EU-based startup lobbying organisations, including those of France and Germany, launched a handy policy map that shows which governments have taken which action to support startups and scale-ups in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
The organisation insists that support for startup is crucial. “Start-ups and growth stage companies are especially vulnerable to the knock-on effects of the coronavirus crisis,” it points out. “Many start-ups are not yet generating revenue and therefore do not profit from fiscal support measures, leaving them dependent on upcoming funding rounds which are likely to be postponed. To help them stay afloat in this period of pressing uncertainty, states and regulators are being made accountable for putting the necessary measures in place. Such measures include facilitating short-term refinancing, the early return of some tax credits, certain guarantees for lost cash flow or short-term employment schemes”.
With the help from the organisation, the financial burden is partly reduced. However, for further development, seeking fund is unavoidable. Understanding the circumstance, even under the pressure of home-restriction, Ritva’s venture capitalists have their own way to observing the struggling of startups as well as their solutions in an attempt to cope with the situation. From their reactions, Ritva’s experts will easily evaluate the success rate of potential startups and then make a profit decision.
The journey to become a digital society in Estonia hasn’t been without roadblocks. In 2007, the country suffered a massive cyber attack that brought down most of its digital infrastructure.
In the wake of the attack, Estonia became home to the NATO Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, which conducts large-scale cyber defense drills. The government also created a data embassy in Luxembourg where it stores copies of all of its data.
Still, officials were forced to respond to more than 10,000 cyber incidents in Estonia in 2017. The country’s top banking regulator recently warned online databases and programs like e-Residency have made Estonia vulnerable to dirty money and sanctions breaches.
Government officials admit that being a digital society means being prepared for cyber threats. Kaljulaid said “cyber hygiene” is essential for every citizen.
“You will always be teaching and educating people,” she said. “It’s like teaching hygiene. You wash your hands because germs spread.”
As you may have noticed, we are delighted to announce that a new version of Crystal Wallet for Android and iOS has been recently released. So, what’s new?
New User Interface: Our developer team has designed a user-friendly and intuitive interface that yields two-fold benefits of convenience and efficiency. The focus of the UI is to ensure simple and quick access to content that the user is looking for and to contribute to a spectacular user experience.
Biometric Authentication with Fingerprint/ FaceID: Crystal Wallet now allows users to use either Fingerprint Recognition or Facial Recognition to open and access the app. This not only makes the user experience better, but also renders the app more secure. Security is enhanced because your fingerprint or Face cannot be copied, or peeked at like while you are using conventional password. The next time you login to the Crystal Wallet app, you will be automatically prompted to use your fingerprint or face ID without the need of manually entering your login ID or password.
Incorporating markets valuation info: The wallet now constantly fetches price of each crypto asset from authorised source, and shows it all to you in a single screen. This allows users better planning and managing on their crypto asset.
Support customised ERC20 token: A handful of new cryptocurrencies is created on a weekly basis. Some of them may be of great interest to you. Our wallet now enables you to stay on top of crypto-innovation, and manage or track your favorite new-born crypto assets easily.
Download the latest version from your app store to enjoy the fullest experience!
Despite being the archetypal safe-haven asset, gold, like everything else, eventually took a hit to the downside on the realization that COVID-19 would become a global pandemic. From the week beginning March 23, however, the gold price rebounded at the same time as a bear market rally in U.S. stocks. Despite the mid-March fall in the gold price, in tandem with the stock market crash, the yellow metal has recovered and the market appears convinced that it is on an upward trajectory.
The Beginning Of A Tremendous Oil Rally
Evidence of recovering oil demand began to emerge over the past week. Yesterday, oil prices climbed to their highest level in months, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at $32 and Brent breaking $35 per barrel. Sentiment has vastly improved over the past few weeks, and recent promising news about a potential coronavirus vaccine has boosted energy and equity markets.
Despite the fluctuation of the market recently, Ritva’s IB team is still doing great in an attempt to making countless profit because their commission is not based on the profits or losses of traders, but on managing trade execution for their clients. And the most amazing thing is we could actually get a huge stable profit from the trillion-dollar-but- uncertainty market.
Reopening EU regions means there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that after weeks of home-restriction, the world will eventually return to normal - even if “normal” looks a little bit different than it used to. The situation would definitely benefit the EU’s economy. “A bit of “cautious optimism” could help consumer confidence. People may make or begin planning purchases they wouldn’t make otherwise.” said Stephen Wu, a professor of economics at Hamilton College.