Reimagining business: Business leaders deliver their prognosis for the remainder of the year

Corporate India is faced with a situation with no precedence or playbook. The lockdown has paralysed businesses and wiped out thousands of jobs from the market. For many, it is a financial apocalypse. There are however, some who are scoping for opportunities within the bleak landscape.While Sequoia India MD Rajan Anandan says thousands of startups will cease to exist, it might be boom time for a few, such as those in robotics. Outsourcing companies will be able to get clients from shipping and logistics industries— sectors that have so far shied away from contracting out non-core businesses, says Keshav Murgesh, CEO, WNS Global Services. Consumer electronics giant Xiaomi plans to hire for various functions. Healthcare services startup Portea Medical is looking to hire people for outside-hospital care.Consumers will be careful about spending, but digital business will rise. There will be more job opportunities for the talented people who abhorred the 9-to-5 office mould.As destruction and creation plays out at a global scale, we asked business leaders for their prognosis for the remainder of 2020, in their companies as well as their sectors. 75925627Digital is the winner: CP Gurnani, CEO & MD, Tech MahindraIt is possible that 2020 will be seen as a year when we got independence from a non-digital world. It is time to “rethink and reimagine business strategies, leading to more businesses turning towards digital practices,” says CP Gurnani, CEO and MD of Tech Mahindra. This is especially true in a world where there is high risk of Covid-19 spreading more as the lockdown lifts. More digitisation will ensure less human-to-human contact as well as safe work and social environments. The first step towards recovery and going digital is to accept a “new normal”. “In all of this, technology will play the role of the biggest enabler. We expect businesses moving to a hybrid model — a mix of physical and remote working,” says Gurnani.The $5.2 billion Tech Mahindra, which has around 125,000 employees, has developed a command and control centre to monitor the health and well-being of its employees. At least 25% of the employees of the tech services company will continue to work from home even after the lockdown ends. As for talent, the focus will be on upskilling and reskilling. External hiring will be only for niche skills.Demand for travel, aviation, hospitality, oil & gas sectors has been impacted across the technology services businesses. But some sectors are seeing a spike in business, including healthcare & pharma and media & entertainment. Global companies are likely to increase spends on cloud services, cyber security and data security. “We expect 5G rollout, demand for home connectivity and digitisation to drive business growth in future” Gurnani adds. 75925746Home is where the moolah is: Meena Ganesh, CEO & MD, Portea MedicalFor healthcare startup Portea Medical, which has presence in 15 cities, life after lockdown will be much smoother as staff can focus on delivery of services rather than getting passes to reach its customers.“Easing lockdown will mean I can deliver services with a lot less pain, without going through the hoops of procuring passes,” says Meena Ganesh, CEO & managing director.She sees a spike in demand for outside-hospital services, particularly from senior citizens as the infection risk of Covid-19 forces them to opt for home care. Portea has already seen an increase in demand for procedures such as chemotherapy, intravenous infusions and giving homecare for immunocompromised people. This could also translate into adding to the workforce. “I can’t put a specific figure but over 8-12 months, we will hire a few thousand,” says Ganesh, who employs 4,000. The hiring will mainly be of nurses and attendants for home care.Ganesh says, “My priorities are like that of any other startup — to ensure that money that I have is being used responsibly, have a runway for at least next 12 months, while constantly looking for new opportunities.”Even as Portea ramps up outside-hospital patient care, Ganesh sees this crisis putting more pressure on business leaders to innovate. “All of us have to learn to live with very different expectations. The new expectations are to make money last longer, reduce cash burn, meet newer d e m a n d s o f consumers and see what opportunity can be tapped into.”It is a home run for Portea. 75925784Online cover for insurance: Yashish Dahiya, founder, PolicyBazaarDigital ventures such as insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar are in a unique position in a lockdown — they don’t need to meet customers face-to-face. This has come in handy now as customers have flocked to the site to buy insurance. Health and life covers have seen a spike of around 40%, though sale of insurance for travel and vehicles are down 10-12%.Speaking from London, Yashish Dahiya, founder of PolicyBazaar, says: “So far there has been a positive impact on our business as people want to buy products online, especially life and health covers. Though this trend may not hold in the longer term if people lose jobs.” The company has 17 business units. But four of those have seen zero transactions since March. Health and life insurance sales have been powering the company.PolicyBazaar won’t be adding to the headcount anytime soon. All hiring, including replacing employees who have quit, has been put on hold at least for this year. All 13,000 employees of PolicyBazaar are working from home, as their office in Gurgaon remain shut. Dahiya doesn’t see the need to open more offices as new hires will work from home. “Homemakers are a very relevant segment to us as they could be selling insurance for us. Earlier it was difficult to tap these people as they couldn’t come to office for some reason or the other. Now they won’t need to.” Besides, he adds, women working from home will be more disciplined about time than the younger lot. 75925823There is tailwind in headwind: Rajan Anandan, MD, Sequoia CapitalStartups need to conserve cash, have a runway to survive for at least 12 months and keep a hawk’s eye on unit economics. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. “Thousands of India’s startups are facing an existential crisis. And by the end the year, it is likely that many thousands of our startups will cease to be in business,” says Rajan Anandan, managing director of Sequoia Capital India.Only innovative ventures as well as businesses that are countercyclical and are seeing significant growth in the current market will survive. Online education, digital health, gaming, online groceries, food delivery and collaboration tools are seeing significant tailwind.In the middle of the lockdown, Sequoia Capital led a $12 million funding in agritech startup De-Haat. These are the kinds of businesses that will buck the trend over time. “We are seeing a major new inflection point and segments such as gaming and edtech will reach a new normal of demand and growth,” says Anandan.The impact of Covid-19 is bringing about changes in consumer behaviour and consumer psychology — and a change in business dynamics — that will impact the startup landscape. “Covid-19 has created challenges around funding and demand visibility and there is a necessity to get to positive unit economics very quickly,” adds Anandan. The faster startups adapt to the changing realities, the better their chances of being seen on the other side of the crisis. 75925842Next wave of outsourcing: Keshav Murugesh, CEO, WNS Global ServicesBusiness process outsourcing grew because it enabled companies to focus more on their core tasks and cut costs, among others. These advantages become even more compelling in the current times. Companies that have been typically slow to adopt to outsourcing will see it as a “strategy for recovery and rebound” says Keshav Murgesh, CEO, WNS Global Services. Companies in shipping and logistics have traditionally been reluctant adopters of outsourcing.BPO companies can also cast a wider net for talent, too. Work from home will help businesses create new streams of talent and mainstream a huge untapped workforce at optimised costs. “This could pave the way to scaling up the gig economy in India. Nearly 120 million Indian women with at least a secondary education do not participate in the workforce. This is the right opportunity to create smart policies to bring them into the larger ambit,” says Murgesh, whose company employs 44,000 people worldwide.The BPO is seeing an uptick in demand for banking & financial services, healthcare & life sciences and retail & consumer products. Travel & hospitality has been impacted. “With the US and the UK opening up, demand is gradually picking up across the industries we serve,” adds Murgesh. 75925847Buoyant on demand: Manu Jain, MD, Xiaomi IndiaThe 1,000 employees of Xiaomi India, the largest smartphone brand by sales in India, are all working from home during the lockdown. While almost the whole world is expecting a tough year because of the pan-India lockdown, MD of Xiaomi India Manu Jain is bullish on demand soaring later in the year. “Smartphone is an essential item. We are bullish. Demand will be high. In Kerala, where we reopened business recently, initial days saw a 2X demand.” He has seen searches and orders for devices pick up on Xiaomi’s e-commerce site mi.com and also on Amazon and Flipkart.The number of devices sold this year may be lower than expected as people can’t venture out or may not venture out to buy, say analysts. But that has not deterred Xiaomi from innovating or focusing on new product launches. For instance, all Xiaomi phones now come with P2I coating that makes them splash-proof. “This was a cause of concern among customers. It will improve overall quality and we will get less complaints.” This will also create more jobs as it is an additional process in the manufacturing line.Xiaomi, which uses Foxconn and other contract manufacturers to make phones it sells in India, claims it has created 50,000 jobs across factories, warehouses, operations, delivery across India. “We will continue to hire at the factory level, warehouses and delivery, besides smaller numbers in product, R&D and quality. Overall, we will add a few thousand more people this fiscal year,” says Jain. Xiaomi is clearly looking at bucking the trend. 75925858Remote era is around the corner: Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, CMD, Cognizant IndiaThe post-Covid-19 world will hasten trends to a highly mobile, virtual and personal world. “We will not just be talking about teleworking but rather remote everything — digital workflow, design, ecommerce, banking, education and telemedicine,” says Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, chairman and managing director of Cognizant India.Even as clients shift gear to enable more remote delivery of services, Ramamoorthy says Cognizant will be able to weather the Covid-19 storm as 60% of its business comes from financial services and healthcare verticals. “We are less exposed to some of the hardest hit industries, including travel, hospitality, retail and automotive,” he says.In fact, the New Jersey-headquartered company, which has most of its 300,000 employees in India, could look at acquisitions to accelerate its strategy and bolster capabilities. The demand environment is highly volatile and uncertain in the near term. “In the near term, we expect client focus to be on critical systems and infrastructure to enable their core operations. Also, discretionary projects or those without quick payback will be delayed.”On hiring, there is a freeze on lateral hires across functions. Cognizant has also deferred the start date for trainees in India to Q3. Ramamoorthy says, “We will honor the more than 20,000 campus offers we made. We will also continue to move forward on our sales hiring plans.”Let us hope the remote era will bring the buzz back to the tech services industry.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3cZZzzY
via IFTTT