Harvard
Harvard University's main campus Darren McCollester/Newsmakers

According to the Harvard Business Review, there are four states of industry disruption that can be analyzed to predict which industries will encounter radical disruption. The categories include viability, vulnerability, volatility and durability. These categories give insight into an industry’s current position, its weaknesses, and even takes into account historical data.

It is important to note that for some companies, disruption is a threat that leads to the need for change and growth to survive. For others, the disruptors, looking at such a matrix can help spot stagnant or legacy industries that are riddled with inefficiencies, thus creating an opportunity for disruption.

The list below represents various companies at the cutting-edge of their respective industries and some of the interesting strategies they are using to create disruption.

1. Level01

Level01 is peer-to-peer derivatives exchange that has brilliantly combined three much sought after technologies on blockchain: decentralized finance, artificial intelligence and multi markets trading to provide what they called the fairest and safest platform for options trading. Initially designed to remove risks prevalent in the derivatives and financial markets, such as hidden costs, unfair pricing, data manipulation and prolong settlements, it is now positioned to provide a seamless entry to the financial markets for the average guy.

With its unique AI aptly called Fairsense, the general public can now trade options with full control of their wallets, and being aware of the risk / reward of a contract as estimated by the AI algorithm, which processes data from Thomson Reuters, a reputable source. The end result is novice traders can now trade with the same efficiency as professionals on Level01 platform.

From our perspective, this innovative startup has developed a blockchain-based platform that not only solves all the deep-rooted issues within the traditional financial markets, but has the potential to open complex financial markets like derivatives trading to everyone, an enormous market worth $542.4 trillion according to BIS (Bank of International Settlement). For a blockchain-based startup, this is a rare feat indeed.

2. accessiBe

accessiBe is the first and only AI-powered automated web accessibility technology that fully complies with the WCAG 2.1 standards and keeps your website accessible at all times. accessiBe’s competitive advantages and product features include an effective and real solution for people with disabilities, automation that does not require manual programming, and stability to fully work on any website or platform within hours or less.

Currently, their technology is being used by over 5,500 customers including brand names such as Hilton, Intex, Seiko, Avon, BMW, and more. Keep your eye out as the company continues to progress towards their goal of making the entire internet fully accessible to people with disabilities by 2025.

3. Promaxo

Promaxo is revolutionizing the medical industry by producing a modular MRI system with a small form factor and a low magnetic field strength in the imaging region, allowing for usage of MR technology in a clinical office. The Company is also developing a MR compatible robotic platform to guide interventions under live MRI guidance.

Promaxo was recently selected for Accelerate, Startup Grind's invite-only community designed to provide promising startups with the exposure for accelerating growth. Out of 4,000 applications, only the top 1% were selected for this year's program which will commence in February.

4. BabelBark

BabelBark is the only digital platform in the fast growth pet market that has taken a horizontal approach connecting and aggregating the whole market in one place - bringing pet parents, pet businesses plus shelters, and veterinary clinics together so your dog or cat can live the happiest, healthiest life possible. Much like Expedia in the hospitality market, or Amazon in ecommerce, BabelBark disrupts the pet market by providing a total platform that connects everyone and everything needed in one place and one mobile platform.

From the most basic of centralizing pet medical records through connecting to any and every provider (groomer, walker, trainer, pet store, vet clinic, etc) with any service needed, to providing pet owners with a 24/7 veterinary support hotline with unlimited calls and a lost and found service. Just about anything you can think of under the umbrella of pet ownership. All of this was done using innovative technology, a clear example of a company disrupting a once stagnant and homogeneous industry.

5. Monart.art

Monart is the world’s first art marketplace and trading platform to discover and sell great artworks and experiences using blockchain technology with shared ownership (sale of shares) of artwork collections and single artworks. The growth of the contemporary art market during the past 20 years has beaten all stock exchanges indices but only multi-millionaires or billionaires profited from it. Monart allows anyone with 100 euros or more to participate in this growth, vastly increasing the art market.

Using blockchain, each artwork can be securely stored with its basic information, while using high definition pictures on a proprietary algorithm to certify the artwork. Monart’s use of disruptive technology is helping solve the counterfeit art market which is expected to make up around half of the general art market’s $67 billion a year industry with $3 trillion of illiquid art assets.

Now, with Monart’s technology and business model innovations, the art buying process becomes accessible to all, becomes cleaner and more transparent for all parties involved, including sellers, buyers, investors, dealers, galleries, and art enthusiasts. This is a prime example of solving a dire need of a market and bringing disruption by doing so.

6 . ContractZen

ContractZen is a turnkey enterprise-grade cloud service that incorporates an advanced metadata-driven document management, electronic signature & built-in data rooms (VDR). Secure and easy to use on any device, ContractZen enhances governance and business by reducing costs, accelerating processes and minimizing risks. This means any company, regardless of the size, can use ContractZen to prepare for due diligence and audits.

ContractZen has been able to make a strong name for itself by providing exceptional service, such as their 30-day no strings attached trial period and offering e-signature providers that are fully compliant with EU and US legislation, helping businesses around the world.

7. HASHWallet

Developed by one of the leading decentralized security companies, eSignus, HASHWallet is an innovative cryptocurrency hardware wallet that is disrupting the cryptocurrency industry through its user friendly, mobile accessible, highly secure wallet. As a non-programmable device, no one is capable of modifying the content stored into the hardware wallet. Thanks to its large e-ink screen, each transaction can be carefully verified and validated.

Extra user experience safeguards will help prevent user error which is currently responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for retail investors. HASHWallet is helping solve this learning curve and as a result has the potential to tap into millions of new crypto users.

8. Otomagnetics

While most medical advancements constitute improvements to existing technologies and treatments, the innovative drug delivery system developed by the biotech startup Otomagnetics opens up brand new avenues for treatment. Otomagnetics’ proprietary technology involves a magnetic device capable of non-invasively delivering degradable magnetic particles carrying drugs, proteins, or genes to hard-to-reach areas of the body.

The Otomagnetics magnetic injector not only offers a non-invasive alternative, it potentially makes it possible to deliver payloads to targets that are currently inaccessible with existing delivery systems, such as the inner ear. The astonishing number of potential applications of the magnetic delivery system, coupled with the fact that the use of this technology would eliminate the need for thousands of costly, invasive surgeries every year, means the company is well on its way to disrupting the entire healthcare sector.

9 . Payoneer

Payoneer’s cross-border payments platform empowers enterprises, businesses, online sellers and freelancers to grow globally as easily as they do locally. With over 1,400 employees serving more than 4 million customers across 200 countries and territories, Payoneer has been and continues to be on the forefront of disruption in the financial services industry.

Beyond facilitating cross-border payments, Payoneer’s latest disruptive move is the introduction of its Capital Advance, a working capital solution for merchants on ecommerce marketplaces. Its Capital Advance service is a low-cost, pre-approved and paperwork-free financing solution. The best part is that due to the gradual settlement as a percentage of future payments they receive, the seller is not required to keep repayment funds in the balance sheet and have the funds available to invest in expanding their business.

10 . Papaya Global

Papaya Global is reinventing global payroll and workforce management. Their automated platform helps companies hire, onboard, manage, and pay people in more than 100 countries. The cloud-based solution is easy to use and scale, eliminates processing errors, ensures full compliance with local employment laws and provides industry-leading BI and analytics.

Since its founding in 2016, Papaya Global has emerged as a leading provider of global payroll solutions: secured a $45M series A funding round, won the European Region Visa Everywhere Initiative award, gained a number of Fortune 5000 clients as well as being named in countless ‘top start-ups to watch’ lists.

11 . nextmarkets

The majority of all private investors fail on the stock market due to two factors. Firstly, excessive fees have a negative impact on performance. Secondly, humans fail because of emotions, tending between fear, greed and arrogance. nextmarkets is a popular trading app that tackled these issues and introduced a better and more profitable way of trading.

The company believes that new traders, similar to soccer players and any other sport discipline, shouldn't trade on their own. For that reason, nextmarkets is home to more than a dozen trading professionals, who provide trading reports each month with up to 200 real-time analyses in six asset classes. Users can then easily follow the advice of pro traders with a swipe. This concept has proven to be among the most profitable trading strategies for new traders.

12. QURAS

Asia-based QURAS is the first public blockchain that enables anonymous, private transactions in public smart contracts. By creating a ‘best of public and private worlds’ blockchain, QURAS gives users and businesses the opportunity to use blockchain for efficiency gains and value creation while protecting confidential information and being mindful of regulatory compliance.

By integrating two leading privacy technologies, Zero-Knowledge Proof and Ring Signature, the QURAS platform allows users to choose their desired privacy level for any type of transaction; anonymous, partially private, or fully transparent. The company’s mission is to enhance privacy, security, usability, and scalability of blockchain tech in order to promote greater mainstream adoption. QURAS recently announced that its native digital currency will be accepted as a form of payment in over 100 retail stores in Japan once its main network goes live in early April.

13. Deputy

Deputy is a cloud-based HRM software that makes it easy to manage teams and employees. From simplifying timesheets to time tracking and scheduling, everything can be done in just a matter of minutes and later automated. The product also helps keep workplace communication centralized, so employees stay on top of any changes or important communications as they happen in real-time.

What started as a vision in 1992 by Founder Steve Shelley, has evolved into a global company that has services companies in over 70 countries and helped hundreds of thousands of people. The company has raised financing from some of the best venture capital firms in the world and is highly regarded publicly as a company to praise based on its growth, culture, and leadership.

14. Oxylabs

Oxylabs is the leading provider of premium proxies and data scraping solutions for large-scale web data extraction. With over 500 global clients, many of which are Fortune 500 companies, Oxylabs is a strategic partner for businesses in a multitude of industries, providing a reliable link for gathering public web data.

Although a versatile company, Oxylabs' expertise lies in data collection for pricing and sales intelligence, brand protection, ad verification, SEO monitoring, to name a few. Oxylabs also provides future-proof resources and excels in delivering technical value with their team of over 140 professionals that have hands-on experience in web harvesting and monitoring.

“Public web data holds immense value for most industries, yet companies face the challenge of finding a reliable way to extract this data on a large scale. That’s where Oxylabs comes in - with state-of-the-art data collection tools and expertise, we enable our clients to effortlessly capture web data for future analysis. Our partners also employ our highly-customizable data-gathering solutions, allowing them to focus on extracting actionable insights instead of maintaining data-gathering infrastructure and resources. Ensuring that public web data is accessible to any business, no matter the size, is what drives us each day.” said Mr. Julius Cerniauskas, the CEO of Oxylabs.

15. SwingBy

Swingby was one of the first five companies to receive a grant from the Ethereum Community Fund, an organization that invests in companies developing blockchain infrastructures and compelling end-user applications that bring the cryptocurrency ecosystem closer to mainstream adoption. But Swingby ultimately decided to build on the Binance chain due to its performance advantages.

Swingby Network has since created a protocol, the Swingby Skybridge, that allows inter-blockchain swaps to take place without a centralized custodian. The Skybridge allows individuals to send cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to cryptocurrency networks that they are not native to, like the Binance chain. This allows users to reap the benefits that come with the foreign chain, including, faster transaction speeds, quicker block settlement times, and the ability to use decentralized financial services, decentralized applications and exchanges.

Several days after the Skybridge launched, it saw millions of dollars of cross-chain transaction volume. As more cryptocurrency pairs get added to the platform, we are expecting Swingby to see even more activity.

16. Alluva

Alluva was founded by James Giancotti, the founder of Oddup, the Hong Kong company that reinvented the approach to startup investment with its proprietary metrics. Alluva aims to solve the problem of opacity, volatility, and risk in crypto investment for institutional players by providing predictive insights.

Building a global analyst marketplace where individuals from across the world can share insights at zero cost and with the potential to earn rewards, Alluva has already announced a partnership with Refinitiv, among others, where it will integrate its predictive data into the latter’s Eikon App. With its predictive insights, Alluva provides tomorrow’s prices today to simplify institutional investment in crypto, with plans to include additional assets in the near future.