Tag: COVID-19 impact

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Strategy

COVID-19 Impact: 5 Tips to Help Your Businesses Recover from Coronavirus Pandemic

Businesses in India (Photo Credits: Pexels)

Businesses have been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and are now limping back to normalcy. The Indian economy is now expected to see a faster turnaround with less disruptions to business operations as it opens up gradually. The coronavirus lockdown forced several businesses to shut while consumption slumped, investments took a hit and jobs were lost. In the time of crisis, it can be hard to stay calm, be optimistic and find ways and means to drive your business. For entrepreneurs and business leaders, being calm and working under pressure is part of the job.

In this article, we’ve put together some ideas that will help you in business recovery. Your business recovery may not happen overnight, but you can make it achievable by trying and not giving up.

Here are 4 Tips that can help your Businesses Recover from COVID-19 Pandemic

Strategic Marketing Plan

The pandemic and the lockdown slowed down the world. However, this time can be utilised by business leaders to strategically think about different ways to establish themselves in the market again once things get normal. An entrepreneur need to think of ways that can help them establish the brand identity again in the market. You need to understand your competitors and work on the leads.

Expect Delayed Payments

Businesses have witnessed a lull amid the coronavirus crisis. As businesses struggle to get back to normalcy, you can expect any restart to be a little sluggish. Almost all of us are going to be in the same boat. As you are struggling to re-establish a healthy cash flow, it’s highly likely your customers will be grappling with that too.

Look For New Sales Channels

As people now prefer being home as a precautionary measure amid the pandemic, this gives an entrepreneur a chance to establish and look for new sales channels to sell their products. Find out ways to serve your clients and customers via alternative sales channels. If you have a retail business and the pandemic has hit you hard and there is no footfall, trying looking for e-commerce offerings. If you are into hotel business, majority of people are trying and avoiding meeting at public places, in such case, you can be open for takeaways meals instead.

Review Your Website and Enhance Digital Marketing

As the economy opens, this is an opportunity for you to review your website and update the information with latest trends and demands. Take a look at your competitor’s websites and try to understand if you can add more value to your content, which will help you stand out from the rest in the market. Go digital and promote your website on social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter among others. Try to build a marketing strategy if you are not already doing so. Having a plan and campaign ready as social media marketing campaigns can connect your targeted audience with a marketing message immediately.

Communicate Openly With Your Customers

‘A Customer is the King’ is an age-old business mantra which shows the importance of customers in every business. Businesses that treat their customers as king have reported higher returns than their competitors who puts little to the value of the customers. Hence, be open and clear with your customers and understand their demands. Don’t just sell your product, but provide solutions to them. If this your mantra, no force can stop you from succeeding and taking your business to another level.

 

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Startup

Home Business Ideas: 4 Brilliant Work From Home Ideas That You Should Consider Taking Up

Home Business Ideas (Photo Credits: Pexels)

At a time when the world is battling the coronavirus pandemic, people have been forced to work from hone than ever. Whiles some are working remotely, some have started their own small businesses amid the crisis. Staying productive and maintaining a balance between professional and personal life is the only way out to survive the crisis. Amid the crisis, employers are encouraging or requiring people to work from home for an indeterminate amount of time. If you are planning to start a home-based business, you need to first understand what interests you and what you are good at!

Remember, a business will survive if there is a need of your product in the market. The struggle comes when you have to create a demand for your product, which takes a great deal of time, efforts and funding. Of course, there are pros and cons to consider when deciding whether a home-based business is right for you. If you’re new to the work-from-home lifestyle, you will have to change some of your routine habits to make working from home a success.

Buy products in bulk to sell

If you want to start with a small business, this hack can work wonders! Amid the pandemic and COVID-19 restrictions, people avoid venturing out to buy things. If you have good contacts, you can buy products in bulk and sell them in your circle, neighbourhood and among your pals. These products can be really simple ones, like cups, mugs, coasters or maybe other daily essential items. Maybe you know of some unique products that aren’t readily available in your market despite a demand for them.

Sell homemade products

Be your own boss and sell what you make. There is no other joy that creating something of your own and selling your own handmade products. If you are the maker yourself, you can consider turning your hobby into a business. If you like making candles, cushion covers, curtains, dresses, or anything else, you can create your products and make it commercial. You can also sell gift baskets, handmade jewellery, sweets, homemade cookies, personalized gifts, etc. The only thing you should focus on is to promote and make it reach large audience via social media. As home business idea, there are plenty of opportunities for designers to create and sell their own clothing from home.

Baker

If you enjoy cooking, especially baking, and you can spend a great deal of time baking in order to create enough goods to sell, taking up baking as a profession is meant for you! It is rewarding which fetches you decent income. With too much competition in the market, it is tough to stand out in the crowd. To take up baking business, buy some equipment and set up a commercial kitchen at home. You can sell your products to local shops or businesses or sell products online. Read up on regulations to be compliant!

Freelance Writer

If you are fond of writing and can play with words, it has huge potential to be one of the most profitable business ideas. Freelance writing is the perfect job for people planning to set up their own blog or digital content firm. You don’t need any formal training to become a freelance writer.

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Startup

Startups in India Bagged $9.3Bn Investments in 2020 Despite COVID-19 Challenges: Report

Startup
Startup (Photo Credits: Pixabay)

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the startups have been hit hard but have managed to emerge successful in attracting investments this year. According to data from consultancy firm Tracxn, Indian startups received investments to the tune of $9.3 billion in 2020 despite the coronavirus challenges. The report reveals that fortunes for the Indian startups turned significantly in the second half of the year. The study reveals that startups raised just $4.2 billion in the first half of the year from about 461 deals while the year saw 11 Indian startups including RazorPay, Glance and Unacademy becoming a unicorn.

According to a report by IANS, the figure is much lower than the record $14.5 billion raised by Indian startups last year as the number of deals this year reached 1,088 from 1,185 last year, TechCrunch reported on Monday. Reports inform that there were 20 funding rounds with dealsize $100 million or larger in 2020 compared to 26 in 2019. Similarly, rounds with dealsize $50 million to $100 million fell to 13 in 2020 from 27 last year. Moreover, the figures exclude the funds rasied by Jio Platforms, which alone bagged over $20 billion investments this year.

The Tracxn report further adds that global technology giants like Google, Microsoft and Facebook wrote checks for Indian startups, while Chinese giants such as Alibaba and Tencent made fewer investments amid border tensions with India.

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Technology

Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom, Named ‘Businessperson of Year 2020’ by TIME Magazine

Eric Yuan (Photo Credits: Twitter)

Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, has been named the ‘Businessperson of the 2020’ by TIME Magazine for the growth of his video conferencing platform amid the coronavirus pandemic. Yuan, who began at WebEx as a coder, soon became integral to the creation of his video-conferencing platform that served as a communication medium for millions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The birth of Zoom by the 50-year-old founder and CEO became successful after he struggled for a decade to build the no-frills, highly functional conferencing platform for businesses. With his determination and hardwork, Zoom was now being used in all sorts of unexpected places, from delivery rooms to grade schools.

Zoom’s popularity grew in 2020 as the world was hit with the pandemic at start of the year, which forced people to stay indoors, maintain social distancing and work from home. With the pandemic spreading its arms over the world, Zoom started growing with leaps and bounds, helping people to continue with the work through online mode. The video conferencing platform allows individuals to communicate virtually face to face. Zoom is now in the business of connecting everybody, originally intended for businesses and universities. Business Ideas For 2021: Here Are 4 Business Ideas Which You Can Start Next Year.

“We never thought about consumers or K-12 schools when we started planning the year 2020,” Yuan was quoted by TIME while speaking over Zoom from his home in the Bay Area. He had ordered employees to work from home in early March, but it wasn’t until weeks later—around when U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted a photo of a Cabinet meeting over Zoom—that it dawned on Yuan that his company might play a major role in this new virtual world order.

Yuan soon found himself serving as the world’s relationship liaison, social chair, principal, convention-center host, chief security officer and pallbearer. Despite competition from corporate behemoths like Google, Apple and Microsoft, Zoom jumped out in front of the video pack, catapulting from 10 million daily meeting participants in December to a staggering 300 million in April. Zoom became a verb and a prefix, a defining syllable of a socially distant era. As his company’s valuation soared, Yuan crashed into the Forbes billionaires list.

Zoom’s software was released in 2013, promoting a free basic service for different-size organisations along with many paid levels. Although many other startups relied heavily on free goods to cause widespread saturation, Zoom targeted modest school and company networks that would pay year after year for subscriptions.

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Startup

Reopened Your Hotel or Homestay Yet? Now Is the Time As Hotel Occupancy in India Improves in September

Hotels and Homestay (Photo Credits: Pexels)

New Delhi, October 29: If you are thinking of the right time to repoen your holiday home or hotel, this is it! Ever since the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic, the hospitality segment was brought to a grinding halt by the pandemic. The sector is slowly limping back to normalcy and is seeing an improvement in demand as hotel occupancy in the country improved in the last two months. According to a report by HVS India and Anarock, the hotel occupancy improved 10-12 percent in September 2020 compared to that in August 2020.

The ‘HVS-ANAROCK Hotels & Hospitality Overview – October 2020’ showed that last month, average occupancy stood at 24-26 percent. “The hotel sector is showing early signs of recovery with occupancy improving M-o-M across most major markets driven by the gradual revival of domestic leisure travel in the country,” the report said.

According to the report, leisure destinations such as Goa and Jaipur have been witnessing a noticeable improvement in occupancy as people started travelling for a change of pace, albeit to destinations closer to their cities. It adds saying that with the growth in demand, the revenue per available room (RevPAR) also improved 12-14 percent to Rs 815-935. The average daily rate (ADR) of Indian hotels stood at Rs 3,400-3,600, 2-4 per cent higher on a month-on-month basis.

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Business Case Studies Finance

71% Indians Expect Companies to Accelerate Digital Initiatives, Says Report

Online Business
Online Business

Bengaluru, October 29: A new report has revealed that about 71 percent of Indians expect companies to accelerate digital initiatives which means that the customer engagement is changing amid the COVID-19 crises. A report by leading Cloud software company Salesforce said that the Indian customers estimate 60 percent of their interactions with businesses take place online this year, compared to 47 percent in 2019. According to the fourth edition of Salesforce’s ‘State of the Connected Customer’ report, about 94 percent of customers said how a company acts during a crisis demonstrates its trustworthiness.

The global report is based on insights from over 15,000 consumers and business buyers across 27 countries, including 650 respondents from India. In India, 94 percent of customers said that COVID-19 has elevated their expectation of digital capabilities and 95 percent said the societal role of companies is changing.

The report adds that while a string of crises has affected all facets of life, including a fundamental shift in how customers connect with brands, factors like empathy, personalisation, convenience, and digital transformation are the keys to customer relationships. According to a report by IANS, as these same customers re-evaluate the role of business in society, the notion of stakeholder capitalism is increasingly factored into purchase decisions. Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce, said in a statement said that regardless of who they market, sell, or provide service to, businesses are navigating a landscape they couldn’t have imagined at the beginning of this year. “A massive shift to digital channels isn’t the only challenge that leaders have to grapple with”, he said.

“Connecting customers at various touchpoints — digital, human, or other — to gain a holistic understanding is the first step on the path to resiliency and growth. They also need to listen and respond to customer demands for empathy and understanding, innovative products and services, and a fundamental rethinking of the role of business in society,” Afshar said.

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Big Relief for MSMEs! Ahead of Diwali, Govt Waives Interest on Interest for Loans Up to Rs 2 Crore to Help MSME Borrowers Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

New Delhi, October 25: With the onset of the upcoming festive season, the government announced a major relief to borrowers. The Modi government on Friday announced waiver of interest on interest for loans up to Rs 2 crore irrespective of whether moratorium was availed or not. Reports inform that the Department of Financial Services came out with operational guidelines in the backdrop of Supreme Court’s direction to implement the interest waiver scheme. The scheme is likely to cost the exchequer Rs 6,500 crore.

MSME loans, housing loan, education loans, credit card dues, auto loans, consumer durable loans and consumption loans are covered under the scheme. Talking about the eligibility criteria mentioned in the guidelines, the accounts should be standard as on February 29 which means that it should not be Non-Performing Asset (NPA).

On October 14, the top Court had directed the Centre to implement the interest waiver on loans of up to Rs 2 crore  under the RBI moratorium scheme ‘as soon as possible’ in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. The top Court said that the common man’s Diwali is in the hands of the government. As per the guidelines, the scheme can be availed by borrowers in specified loan accounts for a period from March 1 to August 31, 2020. “Borrowers who have loan accounts having sanctioned limits and outstanding amount of not exceeding Rs 2 crore (aggregate of all facilities with lending institutions) as on February 29 shall be eligible for the scheme,” it said.

As per the scheme, the lending institutions shall credit the difference between compound interest and simple interest with regard to the eligible borrowers in respective accounts for the said period irrespective of whether the borrower fully or partially availed the moratorium on repayment of loan announced by the RBI on March 27, 2020. The scheme is also applicable on those who have not availed the moratorium scheme and continued with the repayment of loans.

The lending institutions after crediting the amount will claim the reimbursement from the central government. Hearing the matter on October 14, the Supreme Court observed that it was concerned about how the benefit of interest waiver would be given to borrowers and said the Centre has taken a “welcome decision” by taking note of plight of the common man, but authorities have not issued any order in this regard.

A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan had said that ‘Something concrete has to be done’ adding that the benefits of waivers to borrowers up to Rs 2 crore must be implemented as soon as possible. The top court, which posted the matter for hearing on November 2, told the advocates appearing for the Centre and banks that “Diwali is in your hand”.

The Centre recently told the apex court that going any further than the fiscal policy decisions already taken, such as waiver of compound interest charged on loans of up to Rs 2 crore for six months moratorium period, may be “detrimental” to the overall economic scenario, the national economy and banks may not take “inevitable financial constraints”. The top court is hearing a batch of petitions which have raised issues concerning the six-month loan moratorium period announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Marketing Sales

COVID-19 Impact: Meeting Customer Expectations Top Challenge for Indian SMBs Amid Pandemic

New Delhi, October 15: Amid the coronavirus pandemic in India, the small and medium businesses (SMBs) have been finding it challenging to bring innovative offerings to market, personalise customer engagements and keep up with demand when meeting customer expectations. A new report revealed that financial management is the top challenge SMB leader respondents personally face when growing their business. According to a study conducted by leading Cloud software company Salesforce, maintaining financial growth is the top challenge constraining future business growth. It added saying that meeting customer expectations is the top constraint on operations for SMB respondents in India.

The survey was conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of Salesforce. Sunil Jose, Senior Vice President, Salesforce India, said that while reduced customer demand is the top constraint on future growth, applying for financial assistance is the top consideration for the future of the business for the SMBs in the country. “Amid a challenging business environment, SMB leaders have displayed remarkable strength and resilience with only 16 per cent of SMB respondents in India expecting an entirely new structure post the pandemic,” the study said. “This demonstrates that SMBs’ in India are resilient and positive of business continuity ensuring they get back on track”, the study added.

A report by IANS said that while 30 percent of the SMB leader respondents in India expect business to be as usual, 48 percent believe it would be slightly modified. In addition to pre-pandemic challenges, the SMB leaders in India are now faced with operational restrictions, compliance mandates, and shifting customer expectations. However, SMB leaders remain optimistic about the future of their businesses globally, the report added.

It added further that even during the pandemic, SMBs are continuing to adopt new technology, with at least one in five SMB respondents reporting they’ve implemented at least one of the following technology solutions in the last six months, including email marketing software, customer service software, project task collaboration tools, or e-commerce software. “Globally, SMBs’ are at a critical juncture. The key to accelerating consumer demand and solving problems for scale, come down to how they leverage technology to deliver the best customer experiences,” Jose explained.

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Startup

COVID-19 Impact: 15% Startups Halt Operations, 44% Have Cash Runway For Less Than 6 Months

Startup
Startup (Photo Credits: Pixabay)

Mumbai, October 14: The coronavirus pandemic has affected across sectors causing job losses and business being shut. According to an IANS report, the impact of COVID-19 has been severe on the Indian startup as 15 percent of the startups have halted operations.

According to a report by TIE Delhi-NCR and Zinnov, 44 per cent of start-ups have cash runway for less than 6 months, 41 per cent of startups have been impacted negatively while 52 per cent are struggling to raise capital.

In addition to this, there has been a decline in the overall pace of investments, especially in April to June 2020. To add to it, there has been a 48 per cent year on year decline in funding and 37 per cent year on year decline in the number of deals in the quarter.

The decline was even more prominent in seed and early-stage investments. The coronavirus also affected early and late-stage funding. According to the report, there was more than 50 percent decrease in early and late-stage total funding in Q2 20 as compared to Q1 20.