Covid-19 pandemic gives a boost to online companies & start-ups

The Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdown has broken the back of the Indian economy. Amid massive job losses and several sectors in the red, the dream of achieving a $5 trillion economy by 2024 has vanished in thin air, as it may now take more than a year for the domestic economy to come back to its pre-pandemic levels, more so, as any signs of scientists developing a vaccine to combat the menace look distant as of now.

However, under this depressing scenario, the digital sector has emerged as a winner. With the entire country confined to their homes, right from doing their office work to ordering groceries and essential items – everything is being done online, thus giving it a massive boost, even as several essential sectors like manufacturing and services have taken a massive hit.

In such times, small businesses and start-ups face the real test as they fight for competition amid growing demand by consumers for online services.

Among a host of such upcoming start-ups is BrandIt – Elevate Your Brand, a digital branding company, which specializes in providing data-driven, result-oriented strategies that deliver high performing digital campaigns.

Its young Founder and CEO, Komal Raturi, shared her views on the long term impact of the pandemic and the lockdown on the business sector, especially on small businesses and start-ups.

A journalist turned entrepreneur, Ms Raturi, in a blog cautioned that small scale businesses and new entrepreneurs must tread carefully to ensure that their businesses stay afloat.

Measures like keeping a reliable back-up plan in place to counter emergency situations, having ready working capital and well thought out business projection plans at least till December 2020 and which may need to be implemented till the end of the current financial year, have been suggested by her in the blog.

An important aspect is strict cost control on operations to help the business tide over this economic depression.

Here it would be pertinent for such companies to strengthen their digital and technical capabilities, which would help them match up to growing demands, as the virtual world scalable, says Ms Raturi.

She advises start-ups to switch over to a digital business model and automate their processes like developing mobile applications and creating e-commerce websites.

Doing so could prove beneficial to companies as online transactions have witnessed a multi-fold increase since March 2020 when the nation-wide lockdown had been imposed on the country, forcing people to work from home.

Targetted marketing is another measure suggested by the young entrepreneur, which would help companies identify and attract specific market segments in their chosen fields of operation.

By doing so and by creating consumer-specific content after tracking their spending patterns and expectations, would help companies capture such consumers who are responsible for 80% of their revenue.

In addition to all this, using digital public relations and influencer marketing techniques will further help boosting revenues, Ms Raturi adds. Therefore digital campaigning will allow smaller and newer entities to cope with this ‘new normal’ business scenario.

Faster adaption to such techniques in such challenging times would help businesses to not only survive, but thrive, she adds.

For more details, read Komal’s blog at www.branditeyb.com