Already 15-20 per cent of the workforce, earlier used to be procured from staffing firms and subcontractors, are replaced by freelancers tapped from platforms like Topcoder, GitHub, and Upwork.
According to experts, this will have major impact on new investments by Chinese players in companies, such as Paytm, Ola, BigBasket, Byju's, Dream11, MakeMyTrip, and Swiggy, when they go for follow-up funding. Chinese investors, such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, are active in the Indian start-up space, and have collectively invested billions of dollars.
The lockdown that crippled the entire logistics, delivery and supply chain network to near zero, was enough to deal a body blow to India's fastest growing unicorn whose very business model saw a severe disruption, like several other firms and sectors.
In order to make it hassle-free, various start-up support groups such as TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur) and India Angel Network (IAN) are partnering with the digital NBFCs to extend debt finance to their member companies.
Bhattacharya is now more optimistic than before regarding the adoption of newer technologies, even though she acknowledges there could be short-term challenges owing to the pandemic. Salesforce is among the first global employers to take the 'no lay-off' pledge, pertaining to COVID-19.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed how businesses look at payments. Earlier, fintech companies said when they were talking to merchants, they were not interested in digitisation.
The country's top three venture debt firms -- Alteria Capital, Innoven Capital, and Trifecta Capital -- combined deployed about $300 million (Rs 2,200 crore) in start-ups such as BigBasket, Cure.fit, Ninjacart, Dunzo and Lendingkart till April end, according to the government's Investindia website.
'Now, because of COVID-19, we have become the only way to learn.'
Top Indian IT firms, such as TCS, Infosys, and Wipro, have signalled taking aggressive cost take-out measures, including reduction in sub-contracting costs, travel expenses, freeze in salary hikes, and holding back variable payments, among others.
'When a person is capable of infecting 50 others, will you think about the privacy of the person or about protecting the lives of people?'
However, the company says it will suspended promotions and salary increments this year.
While industry leaders Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro have announced deferring wage-hike plans, other players such as Infosys and HCL Technologies are expected to follow suit, according to industry insiders.
With the lockdown in force, live online teaching has become the order of the day, report Peerzada Abrar and Sai Ishwar.
What is aggravating the situation is that e-commerce firms are facing huge shortage of delivery personnel. They have not been able to bring back their staff to work, despite offering higher pay and Covid-related insurance packages.
However, many of these firms were facing an uphill task of convincing the people on the ground to return to work, as many are apprehensive of their safety.
'If the RBI blesses us with a banking licence, we would like to launch a successful bank.'
Lightning Logistics, Shreyas Shibulal's start-up, rents out electric scooters along with the riders for last mile delivery.
Byju's has emerged as the leader in the Indian education-tech sector. They are pioneering technology shaping the future of learning for millions of school students in India.
With the attrition rate continuing well above 20 per cent, one of the highest in the segment, Infosys is on a drive to reimagine the way it engages with employees starting from the time of recruitment itself. The company is using digital technologies in order to simplify recruitment, provide faster career track to employees, and incentivise people with top skills. The company is looking at doubling the number of recruits from tier-I engineering colleges such as IITs and NITs to enrich its talent base. These candidates who are offered twice the salary as compared to regular campus recruits, join as 'power programmers', a term that has been internally coined by the company to recognise the top coders.
This September, Sachin Bansal picked 94 per cent stake in microfinance company Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services. His immediate plan is to scale up the company's operations as quickly as possible without making much investment in physical infrastructure and by leveraging technology.
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