The business sector has undoubtedly taken a massive hit due to the coronavirus outbreak leading to a lockdown. Industries like travel & tourism, automobile, real estate, consumer electronics, and retail are a few that have been quite affected. While this has been a great push for technology sectors of e-learning, digital content and news, agritech, digital payments, etc, there have still been major losses due to lack of revenue.
Non-tech startups have also been facing the wrath of this pandemic, especially, if their startup is not able to cater to the essential needs. Most startups have taken this as an opportunity and ventured into providing services for the essential requirements. Others have embraced technology and kept their businesses going.
Here are 5 startups that are thriving on technology despite the slump:
Byju’s
The lockdown has resulted in the suspension of classes, as a result, there is a sharp increase in demand for online learning. Recently, Byju’s has witnessed a 60 percent increase in the number of new students using the app daily. It is running attractive offers to get the maximum number of users, and is also inviting applications for a backend engineer who will be responsible for writing high quality codes and unit tests.
AgriBazaar
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns are grounding industries around the world, and it is perhaps the biggest challenge in a generation for the agriculture sector in India. In the wake of the current situation AgriBazaar, India’s largest agri-tech marketplace is working closely with farmers, state governments and procurement agencies to allow trade from the safety of their homes. As a full-stack agritech player, AgriBazaar has replicated the physical mandi to an (electronic) e-mandi aggregator model through which once a farmer registers and uploads his produce, buyers can give orders for the purchase. And, once the deal is complete, AgriBazaar facilitates the logistics of picking up the grain from the farmer’s doorstep and delivering it to the buyers’ warehouse.
BridgeLabz
BridgeLabz Solutions LLP, one of India’s largest IP-driven incubation labs aimed at nurturing engineering talent and ideas in the emerging technology space, has launched “CodinClub” a 30-day online coding boot camp for engineers pan-India. The decision comes in the view of the nationwide lockdown due to the outbreak of coronavirus. The boot camp is aimed at bridging the existing skill-gap amongst fresh engineering talent by equipping them with industry-relevant coding skills and from the comfort of their homes. BridgeLabz has created the boot camp to help bring learners to a basic coding proficiency level in the current situation. Currently, Bridgelabz is charging a very nominal fee from the students to ensure it can support the large number of students signing up with help from external faculty who are also Bridgelabz Alumni.
Momspresso
As the nation battles towards Covid-19 eradication, the lockdown period has brought a shift of the Indian marketing community and Brands towards digital media. To inspire and engage with the community during lockdown, Momspresso, a UGC platform is helping brands to conceptualize and launch digital campaigns with the help of Influencers, Content Creators, etc and leveraging the traffic on their social media platforms across 10 different languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi and Kannada. Recently, several brands like Kellogs, Penguin House Indian, Fevicreate, Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance, etc have partnered with Momspresso to drive digital campaigns.
GyFTR (Vouchagram)
GyFTR, is an online-to-offline (O2O) technology solution platform that enables brand currencies and creates a digital gifting & rewards ecosystem for people to interact and transact in real-time. It is allowing 150+ brands to issue and accept Gift Voucher and Redeem various Bank loyalty points directly at the POS. Through its technology, GyFTR is not only strongly contributing to the Global Gifting Market which is estimated at $30 billion in the next 4-5 years of which $400 million would be attributed to the digital space but also helping people maintain social distancing and still surprise their loved ones.
There is always a silver lining to things if you look for it. This outbreak is unprecedented and from here on, things would have forever changed. A business should realise that it can survive only if they are relevant to what people currently demand. Changing with the time and supplying for the right demand is what businesses should look at after the lockdown is lifted!