The shifting business landscape In the Post COVID-19 Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented changes in how we live our lives today. As the situation was worsening for the rest of the world, around the end of March 2020, India announced a nationwide lockdown which was also the world’s largest lockdown. As a developing country with the second highest population in the world, this decision needless to say, was anything but easy both for corporate India as well as its unorganized sectors.

Many businesses across the world and not only in India - such as the aviation sector, traditional retail, real estate are faced with severe financial distress owing to the pandemic and may need government interventions and liquidity measures to get back in the game. There is no denying that numerous companies have been unable to survive the containment policies put in place by governments around the world and many more businesses are expected to scale down operations and even shut down permanently. As social distancing and isolation are becoming the new mantra, all the previously practiced concepts of business protocols are getting questioned like never before. However, on a positive note, in these few months we have observed that pandemic has resulted in accelerating the digital initiatives in a lot of companies which were otherwise lagging behind or procrastinating their digital adoption. As they say “Necessity is the mother of invention”- to stay afloat many businesses are adopting innovative digital strategies and customer engagements to remain in business in these challenging times.

While the situation looks dire for most businesses, the pandemic has resulted in creating truly unbelievable opportunities for some businesses/ sectors. Web conferencing and collaboration tool, Zoom, for example, has seen a 3000% increase in its daily users from December last year when they had just 10 million users. Other industries seemingly benefiting from the pandemic are streaming services, e-commerce platforms, digital health to name a few. It is possible that much of these exponential growths aren’t sustainable though and would likely taper off after the pandemic. But like any of the crises we’ve faced throughout history, there are changes and innovations brought about by the current pandemic that would remain with us for the times to come.

Remote Work

Companies are realizing that a lot of their staff don’t have to work on-site and can work remotely whilst still delivering the same level of productivity, if not more. Companies such as like Twitter have adopted work-from-home policy permanently for their employees which will continue even after the pandemic. Before the pandemic, working from home was a luxury that only a few companies allowed or could afford at least in India.  But owing to this extraordinary situation, most of corporate India shifted to the digital way of working literally overnight. Board meetings and team huddles were replaced by conferencing apps like Zoom and Skype almost in the blink of an eye. In fact to cater to its rapidly increasing demand for its services, to about 300 million daily meeting participants, Zoom required additional cloud capacity and partnered with Oracle for Cloud Infrastructure for its performance scalability and manageability. Understandably this also creates opportunities for Cloud Infrastructure providers to help businesses where there is an upsurge of demand.

Considering the digital infrastructure in India, initially there are bandwidth challenges that each one of us had to grapple with. But over the course of these five odd months we can also observe that digital collaboration has improved like never before and have almost unleashed a new way of working. Even sales and marketing departments which is generally extremely high touch in the software industry have adopted new ways of keeping their customer’s engaged thanks to these online collaboration tools. Just a year back one would have considered it highly unlikely that in India where facetime is extremely critical, a customer would close a sizeable business deal virtually. But yes the reality has shifted- we have been forced to change and adapt to the ‘new normal’ and so have our customers. A lot of us have also attended many virtual events and conferences in this pandemic period and as far as the quality of discussions are concerned perhaps there has been no negative impact of the virus whatsoever. The only thing we would have missed out on were the warm introductions followed by firm handshakes or the ‘Human Connection’- and it would be a while that technology can help us bridge that gap.

Pharma

The pandemic has also seen Pharma companies catching the fancy of the investors after a sluggish period. The BSE Healthcare Index has been soaring high with many Pharma companies gaining 20-30% in their stock prices in the last quarter. While global Pharma giants such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson have entered the race for the coveted COVID- 19 vaccine, smaller biotech companies such as Moderna as well as indigenous firms such as Bharat Biotech are competing on equal footing. India has an important role to play globally in the mass production of the vaccine whenever it comes up which hopefully is not too far away. Also with a total of 7 Indian Pharma companies in the race and with 2 entering the human trials phase, it is definitely an interesting time for the Pharma sector. While shutdowns may have impacted the supply of active material and ingredients (mainly from China), as well as the import and export of pharmaceuticals, one can hope that these issues will be resolved in the times to come. While Pharma companies are focusing towards and overall improvement of public health, the demand for various drugs are also seeing a positive growth as society is becoming more conscious for adopting a preventive route through usage of sanitizers, masks, immunity boosting medicines etc.

Omni channel Ecommerce

It goes without saying that most of us urban Indians have indulged in online shopping and have at times shopped more than required while being confined to our couches at home. Stories of those nasty fights in the supermarkets trying to grab the last toilet roll only paved ways for further impulsive buying. The need for physical - digital integration has never been so strong and we are definitely trying to achieve the same in urban India. Thanks to the Amazons, Big baskets and Myntras of India which continued to supply our daily essentials during strict lockdowns. The best part was even smaller local shops took the opportunity to digitize themselves and partnered with delivery platforms such as Dunzo to enable themselves to increase reach and weather the storm. Although venturing out to malls is not an option most people would explore these days even when the lockdowns have been lifted but many mall outlets are finding their ways to our homes through ‘home shopping” facilities to ensure customer loyalty and keeping their customers engaged.

Contact-less Payment

We’ve been using contactless payment systems such as NFC enabled cards and phones to make purchases for a few years now. Few years back when Starbucks in India started offering the facility of a contactless payment it definitely seemed like a pretty novel concept. However, the adoption rate of this media of payment has increased like never before since the start of the pandemic. Other payment options such as digital wallets such as Google Pay and Paytm are also facing increased demand.  In a MasterCard global consumer study, most consumers are now making purchases through contactless payment systems a trend that is bound to stay after the pandemic.

Autonomous Deliveries

Because of the risk of contracting the virus while delivering goods or receiving them, some companies in the US are already launched  contactless delivery systems that enable the delivery of goods without any of the parties having to be in contact. In China few companies are also making use of robots to deliver goods to their customers. It’s only a matter of time that these trends start picking up in India as well.

Digital Content Consumption

Most urban Indians have embraced digital content platforms / OTT platforms as their close new companion owing to the stay at home orders. Netflix reported added 16 million paid subscribers worldwide from Jan- March 2020 and has also been luring the price sensitive Indian customers with a mobile only subscription of Rs 199. (https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/covid-19-impact-netflix-reaches-almost-16-million-subscribers-in-the-first-three-months-predicts-a-lower-second-half-1670196-2020-04-23). Not only OTT players but online course platforms such as Udemy and Coursera are witnessing a surge in demand and most people are using this time to upskill themselves. Similarly schools and educational institutions are making use of online collaboration tools and content platforms for running their courses and keeping students connected with their academic ecosystem.

Digital Health Solutions:

Indian healthcare system has demonstrated an exceptional acceleration in the way we are integrating digital transformation into healthcare. While most Indians still feel comfortable in consulting their physicians face to face, unprecedented times do call for unprecedented measures. With the need of the hour, hospitals such as Manipal and Fortis are offering engaging user interfaces to make consultations and remote diagnostics accessible right from the comforts of our homes. In fact health and fitness industries also are taking a new form by making the shift to digital. Companies such as Cult.Fit are bringing in a new wave of disruptive change in the otherwise high touch health and fitness industry by offering more personalized home based programs to fitness enthusiasts.

3D Printing

This is definitely a growing industry in India and the pandemic has definitely created new opportunities in this front.A lot of the materials needed by businesses and consumers are unavailable due to the disruption to the global supply chain by the pandemic. 3D printing can help with lessening the effect of this disruption. 3D printing is used to print simple components quickly and addresses the problem of availability and scalability. Indigenous companies such as Divide by Zero are stepping up to the challenge of PPE kits, ventilator components and disinfection boxes- things that are in high demand at this time. May be in the coming days there is an opportunity In India to see more of such 3D printing firms.

While the global economy is mired for a downturn and most states in India continue to debate on the merits and demerits of further lockdowns, these are just some of the business shifts that we are noticing in the pandemic. And depending on the length of stay of this unwelcome visitor, there could be more innovations triggered by this crisis. While some of these trends might die off after the pandemic, a good number of them would remain with us and continue to impact the way we do business, creating a drastic change in our point of views- bringing in operational efficiency and automation in companies which have been digital laggards for a long time. Just as the Law of Natural Selection takes over at the time of a crisis, at the same time our caveman instincts for survival also manifest themselves through the most astounding innovations. There is of course a lot of uncertainty in the coming days. However, the novel Corona virus is teaching us a very important lesson for sure- there is an opportunity in every crisis and we have to grab the right one to keep going.