Started 79 years ago, in 1943, IKEA has gone on to become the largest furniture retailer. And like any brand that goes on to become a market leader, IKEA pioneered multiple innovations in its industry. To add to that, IKEA, in recent years, has also adapted itself to stay relevant in the digital era.
In this blog, we will dive into the strategies that propelled IKEA to the top of the furniture industry, look into how IKEA has maintained relevancy in the digital world and understand IKEA's business model.
IKEA Founding & Growth Story
Like most entrepreneurs who impact the world, IKEA's...
Before one can understand backward integration, one must first understand vertical integration because backward integration is essentially a type of vertical integration.
But just understanding Vertical Integration without learning about its counterpart strategy — Horizontal Integration — would be like solving a puzzle with a missing piece. So, to help you develop a holistic understanding, I will first run you through Vertical & Horizontal integration briefly before explaining Backward Integration.
Companies looking to expand their business generally employ either of the two strategies: Horizontal Integration or Vertical Integration.
Horizontal integration is when a company expands by acquiring a similar one in their...
Before we begin to understand forward integration, we need first to understand vertical integration because forward integration is essentially a type of vertical integration.
But even before we dive into understanding forward integration, it would be good to a step back to understand Horizontal integration and vertical integration are two types of business strategies that go hand in hand.
Generally speaking, companies looking to expand and grow their business employ either of the two strategies: Horizontal Integration or Vertical Integration.
When a company expands by acquiring a similar company in their industry at the same level of the supply chain, the...
Writing for Techcrunch in 2013, Aileen Lee, an American venture capitalist, coined the now frequently used word ‘Unicorn’.
Unicorns, as we all know now, are companies valued at more than $1 billion. Similarly, Decacorns & Hectocorns are sister terms of ‘Unicorn’.
Decacorns are companies having a valuation of more than $10 billion. Hectacorns are companies having a valuation of more than $100 billion. As of 2022, only two companies — ByteDance & SpaceX — are part of this elite club of Hectocorn companies.
ByteDance, the parent company of Tik Tok, was the first company to become a Hectocorn after it was valued...
The goal of reaching a valuation of $1 billion, or in other words, becoming a 'Unicorn', is considered a milestone in the life of a startup. But with more than 1000 unicorn companies as of Feb 2021 in the world compared to just 142 in 2015, the unicorn status has lost its charm. Startups are now setting their eyes on higher targets of becoming a ‘Decacorn’,
Put simply, Decacorns are private companies having a valuation of more than $10 billion. Relative to Unicorns, Decacorns are a much more exclusive community, consisting of around 49+ companies as of 2021. Some familial...
If we look at it from a narrow lens, Shopify is in the business of making it easier for people without coding skills to launch an online business. But if we zoom out, we could classify Shopify as an upstart in the broader retail market.
Yes, it is primarily in the business of internet retailing. But retail is not limited to the internet. Selling online is a sister distribution channel to the traditional offline channel. The whole point of commerce is to be present where the customer is, be it online or offline, or both, in an integrated fashion.
Shopify now...
Before Adam Angelo started quora, he had a job that most engineers would consider to be a dream position: he was the Chief Technology Officer at Facebook.
In a 2010 interview with Business Insider, almost a year after he had started working on quora in June 2009, Adam shared what made him take the decision to leave Facebook and start on his own, “I could make a bigger impact on the world by starting something new rather than just continuing to optimize Facebook.”
But it wasn’t like there weren’t any Q/A answer sites when he started Quora in 2009. There was Reddit,...
In 2013, Evan Speigel, Snapchat CEO, famously turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. To put things into perspective, Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012.
And 2013 was not the last time Facebook tried to buy out Snapchat. Facebook was interested in buying the upstart social media competitor as late as 2016.
But Snapchat, like its counterpart, Twitter, decided to chase an independent destiny. Whether Snapchat made the right decision or not is something that we can assess in hindsight based on its current financial standing and future potential.
And that's what we will do in this blog. But first, we will look at...
Around 4 billion people were using one or another email service in 2020. And approximately 306 billion emails were sent and received every day worldwide.
One reason why email usage is so widespread worldwide is that it is, for the most part, free. And second, there's no shortage of free email services — Gmail, Outlook & Yahoo Mail are popular examples. Despite this, more than 50 million people worldwide are now using a lesser-known email service called ProtonMail, which started in 2014.
The small yet substantial rise in popularity of the relatively new ProtonMail begs the question of why anyone would switch from...
The year is 2012. It's been five years since Flipkart started operations in India. Amazon is a year away from entering the Indian market. Internet adoption is happening at a crazy place.
In the same year(2012), Nykaa starts as a niche online retailer focused on beauty products. Today, Nykaa's website gets around 12 million monthly average website visits. To add to its success in the digital world, Nykaa also runs 84 offline stores across 40 cities.
In around a decade since its founding, Nykaa has become synonymous with beauty shopping in India, pushing forward the growth of the beauty industry in the country....
