The number of new Billion Dollar Unicorns has come down drastically in comparison to last year. It is even rarer to find a unicorn in the highly consolidated online real estate industry. Compass is the latest Billion Dollar Unicorn to make this cut with its Big Data-driven real estate platform. >>>
According to iResearch Consulting Group, the online-to-offline (O2O) market size is estimated to have grown 38% over the year to RMB 335 billion (~$53.78 billion). The market is expected to grow by over 20% each year through 2018 to be worth RMB 626 billion (~$100.501 billion) in China. China’s Zhongshang Huimin is the latest O2O player to enter the Billion Dollar Unicorn club.
After a drought of tech IPOs early this year, 2016 is finally ending on a positive note with a string of successful IPOs. After Twilio, Line, Talend, and Nutanix, cloud spend management company Coupa is the latest among Billion Dollar Unicorns to deliver a successful IPO. >>>
After a rather slow IPO schedule for the technology sector during the year, things appear to be looking up. Last week, hyperconverged storage provider Nutanix, finally went public. It had filed to go public in December last year, but the market conditions led to a delayed listing. It has only been a week since it listed, but the Billion Dollar Unicorn club member appears to be doing well so far.
According to InternetRetailer, overall Latin America web sales grew 15.5% in 2015 to $22.22 billion compared with the 22.1% growth recorded a year ago. The slowing down of the growth rate is attributed partially to the depressed macroeconomic conditions in Brazil, which accounts for 58% of the region’s web sales. Last year, the Brazilian economy shrank 3.8%, recording the biggest decline in gross domestic product since 1991.But slowing down of the Brazilian economy has not stopped online retailers in the Latin American region from continuing to push ahead. >>>
According to IDC, the proportion of digital related consulting engagements are expected to grow from nearly 50% for the period 2013-2015 to 80% by the year 2019, driving the total market for Digital Strategy services to more than $97 billion globally by 2019. Billion Dollar Unicorn player Globant (NYSE:GLOB), the first Latin American Software Services company to list on the NYSE exchange, is making its presence felt in the industry.
According to a report by Digi-Capital, the augmented and virtual reality market is estimated to grow to $120 billion by the year 2020, compared with the forecast of less than $10 billion in 2016. In 2020, virtual reality (VR) is expected to account for $30 billion of the market while augmented reality (AR) will account for the remaining $90 billion. Billion Dollar Unicorn player Blippar is focused on making a mark in this high growth industry.
This year has seen Chinese ride-sharing firm Didi Chuxing expand its list of investors to include the likes of Apple, Foxconn, and even Uber, cranking up its valuation to $33.7 billion. It is now the third largest Billion Dollar Unicorn after Uber and Xiomi.
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