Nicola McClafferty, partner at the London-based VC firm Molten Ventures, estimates that it would've taken at least a decade to see as many people switch from brick-and-mortar to online shopping experience across the world if not for the lockdowns that saw a big part of the global population confined to their dwellings for months on end.

While presenting a huge opportunity for the companies who were ready to handle this shift, this shift has also emphasised the shortcomings and issues of today's e-commerce and adjacent industries.

"We're looking at a large volume of retail and a change in purchase behaviour happening online that's leveraging an infrastructure, be it software or physical infrastructure, that has been built to service previous generations of retail," McClafferty said.

This and similar issues in the field of consumer tech — or rather the startups that can solve them — is what McClafferty focuses on at Molten. We sat down to discuss what the future holds for this segment, and what trends are the most important to follow.