There’s always a sense of déjà vu every time Prime Minister Narendra Modi picks up the 8 pm slot for his televised address to the nation. Last time, the instructions were to clang utensils to boost the morale of frontline healthcare workers. We’re all waiting with bated breath for 8 pm, again!
Meanwhile, the Indian Railways has started special air-conditioned trains to ferry people stuck in different states. And it’s mandatory for passengers to download Aarogya Setu app on their mobile phones before commencing the journey. While activists have raised privacy concerns regarding India’s Covid-19 contact tracing app, technology companies around the world are helping governments in flagging potential coronavirus outbreaks.
Indian American Inder Singh is the founder and CEO of one such company. His eight-year-old San Francisco-based health technology firm Kinsa is selling more than 10,000 internet-connected thermometers every week in the US. In its effort to prioritise its public health response, the firm has partnered to distribute 500,000 thermometers in the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, and Oregon. These thermometers use data fed by users into an app, helping spot the spread of the coronavirus while identifying clusters where a possible outbreak is likely.
An early warning system
Singh, who has spent most of his career in public health across the world including in India, spoke to ET’s Samidha Sharma in an exclusive phone interview highlighting that an effective early warning system, widespread testing, treatment and isolation are ways to battle the Covid-19 spread into communities.
“You do not sacrifice privacy in order to do outbreak detection. Today, technology has evolved, we can do both now, so long as we make sure that we watch people do it the right way and regulate it.”
– Inder Singh, founder & CEO, Kinsa Health
Read more here.
Brand makeover
New-age brands in the personal grooming, hygiene, premium packaged foods, and clothing space are expanding their digital footprints beyond e-commerce leaders Amazon and BigBasket, moving supply chains from China to India and rejigging product portfolios to focus on health and wellness due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Why now?
The move to diversify beyond the top two marketplaces has been triggered by a nearly 60% fall in digital marketing spends and full-stack logistics services available to small businesses.
- At least ten brands, including Wow Skin Sciences, PeeBuddy, Timios, Wingreens Farms, Vahdam Teas, Mosaic Wellness, and Turmswear are nudging loyal customers to buy directly from their storefronts and social media channels.
- Some businesses are also actively scouting for new users by listing on hyperlocal delivery platforms like Swiggy, Zomato and Dunzo or using offline stores listed on these apps. Wingeens Farms which sells dips, spreads, and sauces, for instance, has listed on most hyperlocal platforms to expand reach at a time when cooking at home has spurred demand for its products.
- On the supply chain side, businesses have quickly pivoted to hedge their dependence on China. Bombay Shaving Company has already moved the manufacturing of its precision razor from China to India. Wow Skin Science has moved part of the production of pumps used in its products to India
Highly quotable
“Trust is the biggest currency in this market… We have seen a dramatic consumer shifting to trusted brands…The experimental customers have vanished.”
– Manish Chowdhary, CEO, Wow Skin Science
Read the full story here.
And it’s not just new-age brands that are revamping their businesses. Five-star hotel chain JW Marriott launched its “Marriott on Wheels” delivery service in partnership with Swiggy. Over 20 hotels in cities such a Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Delhi, Agra, Pune, Mumbai among others will be listed on the food aggregator’s platform. Twitterati, however, are unsure whether people will shell out “five-star prices” for having food at home.
“Marriott on Wheels” delivery service launched on Swiggy for home delivery. Finding relevance in a post-Covid world… https://t.co/NPtw8JwAfK
— Samidha Sharma (@samidhas) 1589194908000
India has decided to put the much-awaited e-commerce policy, which seeks to set up a regulator for the sector, on hold for now in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
E-commerce policy put on hold
A draft of the policy was discussed by a group of secretaries after which a call was taken to not pursue it for some time. The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has redrafted the policy with the aim to promote e-commerce while protecting kiranas and also connect offline stores with online ones. It has also pitched the idea of a regulator through an Act of Parliament.
Timeline
- The department had in February last year released a draft national ecommerce policy, proposing to set up a legal and technological framework to restrict cross-border data flow and conditions to collect or process sensitive data locally and storing it abroad.
- The government’s Press Note 2 issued in December 2018 barred online marketplaces and their group companies from owning their vendors and prohibits them from controlling the inventory sold on their platforms. Read more.
Getting back to work
Some companies have already started calling back one-third of their staff—the maximum strength allowed in red zones. Several others are taking a more calibrated approach, 5 percent or fewer employees in offices to begin with. But everyone is being careful, aware that an incident of infection can prove costly.
- At Flipkart’s corporate office in Bengaluru, teams that require office IT infrastructure to perform optimally will return to work in a staggered manner from this week.
- Infosys opened its workplaces in Mangalore, Bengaluru, Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram, Pune, and Hyderabad last week with up to 5% of its workforce.
- Tata Consultancy Services, which had created a 95% WFH environment for its global workforce, has less than 1% of its employees currently at the offices opened in India so far. Read more.
WFH could find permanent home in IT contracts >> Read more
IT industry seeks changes in laws as WFH set to become norm >> Read more
Revenue surge
Home services startup Urban Company’s operating revenue more than doubled in financial year 2019-20 on the back of its beauty and wellness segment.
The Gurgaon-based startup, founded by Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra, runs a full-stack services marketplace including spa, beauty, grooming, repairs, cleaning among others. It earns revenues through a commission fee model based on transactions made on its online platform.
By the numbers
- Urban Company, which rebranded itself from UrbanClap earlier this year, clocked a 103% year-on-year growth in operating revenue to Rs 216 crore in FY20, compared with Rs 106 crore in the previous fiscal.
- The beauty and wellness vertical contributed around 55% to its FY20 revenue.
- The net booking value of all transactions on its platform jumped 138% to Rs 918 crore in FY20, from Rs 385 crore in FY19. Read more.
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