Over the past week, several unusual partnerships among start-ups, traditional businesses and hospitals have been announced, and several more are likely to materialise soon. The trend could see increased importance of gig workers, who are taking considerable risk to deliver goods to people in the time of a pandemic.
For now, Bounce, Shuttl, Fab Hotels, Instamojo, Zomato, Curefit, and HealthifyMe, among others, are going for salary deductions. Most of the consumer internet start-ups, besides those who are in the grocery delivery, education tech, and video conferencing business, would ultimately lay-off people and cut back salaries.
'In the first phase, you might allow 30 per cent of the workforce to come in and see how it goes,' says industrialist Harsh Goenka.
Despite the failure of most e-commerce players to meet orders through the first week of the lockdown, there has been no serious crisis, thanks to supplies from 11 million small kirana and mom-and-pop stores across the country with the support of over 300,000 distributors and wholesalers.
While some researchers are developing prototypes for ventilators to overcome their shortage, others have teamed up to develop testing kits.
'When 99.9 per cent of the most vulnerable are above 65, I see no logic in this sweeping lockdown in a country in which 94 per cent are below 65.' 'The most sensible thing to do would be to recalibrate this unnecessary lockdown as soon as possible.'
'90 per cent of the food and grocery business is still with the kiranas.' 'If kiranas are not allowed to operate, it becomes a serious issue.'
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.
'We are going to be overwhelmed by the need for hospital beds. There are simply not enough beds in government hospitals.' 'We will need a large number of medical professionals and without the private sector's involvement, the government won't be able to expand capacity.'
There is a lot of police action on the ground and even inter-state movement has been stopped, because of which deliveries of essential items via platforms, such as Flipkart, Amazon, Grofers, and Milkbasket, aren't happening. Food-delivery firms -- Swiggy and Zomato -- are facing similar challenges, according to the sources.
DOIT is a 100 per cent subsidiary of Morgan Credits in which Rana Kapoor's daughters Radha, Roshini and Raakhe, are directors. In 2018-19, the company incurred a net loss of Rs 48.76 crore on revenues of Rs 59 crore - a sharp contrast to 2017-18 when it had profits of Rs 2.7 crore on revenues of Rs 43 crore. To fund these aggressive investments into its subsidiaries in 2018-19, DOIT used debt which doubled to Rs 600 crore in 2018-19 from the previous year.
Feedback from telecom members indicated a 10 per cent increase in traffic, but no fears of choked networks. Telcos currently use 65-70 per cent of the network capacity. In other words, they have enough additional capacity to handle the new pressure without clogging the system.
According to a survey by community platform LocalCircles, early-stage start-ups, funding dependent start-ups and many small businesses will soon be fighting for survival as the spurt in coronavirus cases hits them hard.
Bengaluru-based Healthtech start-up Mfine has rolled out a coronavirus assessment feature which enables virtual medical consultation to assess patients who have flu-like symptoms. Portea and Haptik habe developed chatbots, which will disseminate information related to coronavirus.
In terms of market capitalisation, Zee alone has a market cap of Rs 24,000 crore compared to Rs 15,000 crore of the merged Reliance entity.
Based on Statista data for 2019, Vodafone has 17.2 million subscribers in the UK, 29.5 million in Germany, and over 13.7 million in Spain. Without Voda Idea, the Group will become smaller than Airtel and Jio.
The Indian market is more in sync with mobile markets of advanced countries like the UK, Japan, and South Korea, where there are fewer players - three to four.
Apart from making your purchases on these platforms expensive, it will also mean sellers will have to face the brunt of reduced cash flows amid already low margins for some. Experts said the proposal, which will take effect on April 1, 2020, and will be inserted as a new section in the Income Tax Act, is expected to affect the working capital of e-commerce companies and reduce cash flows for e-sellers.
The companies have offered to pay upfront the principal amount due for licence fees and spectrum usage charges (SUCs) on the basis of adjusted gross revenue (AGR). This amount will not include the interest, the penalty, and the interest on the penalty.
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