Shared Economy may be the future of retail and selling of services

A new age of reciprocity is here as Shared Economy is starting to make its imprints. Research from popular French tech conference LeWeb shows that those who have participated in this new trend “have double downed in this market.” Beyond the macro-trends of sustainability, increased population, and access to the internet, the research found that the startups are strengthened with VC funding.

For those who don’t know, shared economy is the trend that cloaks up all platforms and ventures that enable the transfer of goods to be shared and exchanged. It works on the same principle of Anthropological Reciprocity which defined as “mutual or cooperative interchange of favours or privileges, especially the exchange of rights or privileges of trade between individuals or groups as in the transfer of goods or services between two or more individuals or groups.” So in context it is the funding and sharing or exchanging of personal goods and services and products online.

In the study done to see where this trend is standing Altimeter investigated with 200 global sharing economy startups and found that 37% of them were funded by VCs and averaged on about US$28 million in funding. The category has received approximately US$2-billion funding in the past few years. This generous amount of funding is a clear marker that the shared economy development is not going away as some might have predicted.

On top of this, Altimeter also found that 68% of the 200 startups were aimed at helping and funding individuals in redistributing their own goods or services; consumers trading, lending or renting products to each other. An additional 22% of the sample market enabled people to people trading or gifting (like Swap.com) without using conventional money. Lastly, only 14% of the startups were enabling companies (like LiquidSpace) to share products and services.

The Shared economy movement from this angle seems unstoppable. Industry analyst, Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter will be sharing all his research results at the Le Web London 2013 stage as well as publish his full outcomes and conclusions of the shared economy industry on n the LeWeb blog and at web-strategist.com.