When writing this article, India is the fourth-worst head country with regards to COVID-19; it's worse than the UK worse than Spain and worse than Italy. The only countries that are suffering more than India are Russia, Brazil, and the United States.
Within all of these countries, there's one common denominator job loss, thousands and thousands of jobs are disappearing as companies downsize or go out of business.
According to a recent NASSCOM survey, more than 90 percent of India's tech startups see their revenues decline because of COVID 19.
Thirty-four percent of them have seen their revenues dip by more than 80 percent; they are barely surviving before the pandemic over at least 40 percent of India's tech startups will have halted their operations.
A portion of that 40 percent will have begun the process of shutting down. That's not even including 4% of Indian startups that have shut up. You might be thinking that perhaps everything's going to be okay because the lockdown now is slowly being lifted. Still, the lockdown isn't entirely over yet.
At this point, 70% of startups have two months or less of cash left.
It will just say it now necessity is the mother of invention. It's often during humanity's darkest moments that entrepreneurs and inventors and creators emerge from the work to create unique solutions in an attempt to mitigate some of the sufferings that have infected the world.
Here's a couple of companies that you've probably heard of Airbnb, Square, Whatsapp, and Instagram they're all unicorns, and there are also some of the most successful startups in the world.
But I think that a lot of people forget that these companies were also founded but in 2008 and 2010, which is when the world was going through the Great Recession.
So here's what I'm trying to say here every crisis is also an opportunity because to an extent the playing field has been leveled trends have been disrupted.
Let's take a look at some of the business opportunities that the coronavirus pandemic and the financial recession that has come as a result, have presented India.
Let's talk about EdTech if you're Indian then you know how important education is in this country, but even if you're not Indian the numbers make it very clear there are approximately 1.5 million schools in this country and the number of students
is expected to reach 280 million by 2021.
It makes India one of the largest education ecosystems in the entire world. That's just kindergarten to grade 12 that we're talking about here. There are also nearly a thousand universities in the country, and 40 million students enrolled in India's higher education system.
The pandemic sent India into lockdown a majority of this education was happening offline now though things have changed schools and colleges have been shut down.
Even when they reopen, I guess that a lot of parents will be hesitant to send their kids back to school, mainly if the novel coronavirus is still infecting new people.
With COVID 19 it's not just about individuals if your kid picks up COVID 19 at school that means that your other children will get it you will get it your spouse will get it your parents will get it.
EdTech has become so indispensable to Indian parents and their children, and India's Edtech startups are responding to this demand. Many have offered products and services free of cost for some time during the lockdown so that the education of millions of Indian students isn't disrupted.
As an example of what's happened here in the EdTech, let's take a look at India's only EdTech unicorn BYJU'S looking up free the startup has over 50 million registered users on its platform, and 13.5 million of these 50 million started BYJU'S between March and April.
Unacademy's founder and CEO, Gaurav Munjal, said that the company's revenue for April alone surpassed their combined revenues of the year's 2017 & 2018.
Now I'm not saying that Edtech is going to eliminate the popularity of offline schools. Still, its value proposition has been made abundantly clear to parents, students, and educators in a way that just wouldn't have been possible before the pandemic people have been forced to see the value of Edtech they've been forced to test it out.
Let's talk about video conferencing for many people working from home has become the new healthy. As a result, the use of video conferencing apps and software for professional use has exploded. In particular, one name has become more or less global across the world's business landscape, and that name is zoom.
Eric Yuan founded the Zoom video conferencing startup in 2011, and the company has spent the last decade essentially preparing itself for this moment.
It is now the go-to video conferencing app for companies like Uber, Zendesk, Logitech, Dropbox Pandora, NASA, Autodesk, Rakuten, and many others.
In December of 2019, Zoom had ten million daily active users, but in coronavirus pandemic, millions of people worldwide have been working from home since the start of the novel. That number has grown to over 300 million daily active users across its video conferencing and remote collaboration platforms, which is an insane 30x growth.
Zoom is the most popular video conferencing platform; that doesn't mean that other platforms haven't enjoyed similar growth because of COVID 19. Google and Microsoft have scaled their video conferencing platforms since the pandemic began Google Meet became free in March of 2020.
They've also seen a 30x growth with 3 billion minutes of video meetings being conducted daily Microsoft teams, on the other hand, have surpassed 44 million daily active users, which is more than double the 20 million that it reported in November of 2019.
Skype, which is also owned by Microsoft, has seen its average daily users increased by 70 percent month-over-month, even Skype to Skype calling minutes have increased by 220 percent okay, so that's all well and good.
What about India? First, let's talk about Jio; they might be a little bit late to this; they set to launch their own video conferencing platform called Jio Meet, while this doesn't technically fall under video conferencing.
I thought it would be worth mentioning air meet.
Air meet is a Bangalore based online event platform that enables its customers to host live online events for up to a million guests.
However, what sets air meet apart is that they allow guests to network and interact with each other while the event is taking place.
The founder and CEO of air meet Lalit Mongo, said that air meet witnessed a nearly 10x growth that's 1,000 percent growth in video consumption on our platform compared to the pre-COVID times.
Let's talk about online grocery delivery. For years online grocery delivery has been one of the most robust markets for Indian startups to crack. The reason for this is the spaces low-profit margins, and high rates startups either need to raise a massive amount of funds or generate enough orders to cover their costs with massive revenues.
One of these things is easy to accomplish; that said, the potential for growth in this market for the startups who manage to survive is a vast online food and grocery retail makeup.
Just 0.2 percent of India's overall retail market that number though expected to reach 1.2 percent by 2023. Now I know what you're thinking about 1.2 percent doesn't sound like a lot; however, it equates to ten point five billion dollars; that said, grocery shopping has up until recently been exclusively an offline activity for most Indian people.
But, everything on this list the COVID-19 has changed that now in 2020, people have a choice they can either go out and shop at crowded markets or can order groceries with the safety and convenience of their own homes.
This results in tremendous growth for grocery delivery startups. Take the example of NDS 2 grocery delivery unicorns big basket and grow firs before the lockdown began big basket was fulfilling around 150,000 orders every day now though they're fulfilling double that 300 thousand orders per day increase.
On the other hand, they saw a 100 percent surge in demand in the first week of the lockdown. Now, they see a 60 percent growth in daily grocery merchandise volume compared to pre-COVID-19 levels besides platforms that are exclusively focusing on grocery delivery e-commerce.
Amazon and Flipkart have also taken the opportunity presented to them by COVID-19 to scale up their grocery delivery segments.
Mainly because for an extended delivery time of all non-essential products was entirely halted by the government. The demand for online groceries was so massive that no service from any startup was able to keep up; instead, these startups were forced to stop taking orders to fulfill pending ones.
But what's going to happen once this demand subsides when markets are safe, and you don't need to stand in little white circles. At the same time, you wait in a queue outside of your local Khurana shop well. It's hard to predict what the post-COVID-19 shopping experience is going to look like for Indian people.
If grocery delivery startups do a good enough job of enticing people to stay on their platforms with competitive prices and discounts and a headache-free delivery process, then people might end up deciding to shop exclusively online instead of using the time and energy required to go out.
Industry experts are already predicting that online grocery shopping sales will equate to three billion dollars this year, a vast seventy-three percent jump from last year 1.7 billion all right next up.
Let's talk about gaming the rise in popularity of gaming for the last few months can be attributed to the same thing that has caused an increase in demand for over-the-top streaming platforms, people having lots of free time, and nowhere to go.
According to a Google and KPMG report, India's online gaming market expects to go from 290 million dollars in 2017 to 1 billion dollars by 2021 again though that study is from before the pandemic, and by 2021 this market may be much bigger than 1 billion dollars.
Firstly let's take a look at popular mobile gaming tournament platform Mobile Premier League the company's VP of growth and marketing. Abhishek Madhavan said that
number of playtime of their games has increased by 55% between March and April of this year. Specifically, for the most popular game world cricket championship, they've seen a 100% increase in playtime.
Paytm first games witnessed a massive 200% growth in its user base in March, gaining a staggering 75 thousand users every day. The majority of its users are coming from India's metros; the company saw a rise in the number of users coming from Tier two and tier three cities.
The rising popularity of mobile games here in India during this pandemic and now that more people than ever before are trying mobile gaming out for the first time can expect this industry to benefit in the long run from this spike seen in players.
Alright, guys, there you have it; those are some of the sectors and companies that have benefited and grown most during times of crisis.
I hope that you enjoyed this article, and if you did, I would love it even to leave a comment down below.
Within all of these countries, there's one common denominator job loss, thousands and thousands of jobs are disappearing as companies downsize or go out of business.
According to a recent NASSCOM survey, more than 90 percent of India's tech startups see their revenues decline because of COVID 19.
Thirty-four percent of them have seen their revenues dip by more than 80 percent; they are barely surviving before the pandemic over at least 40 percent of India's tech startups will have halted their operations.
A portion of that 40 percent will have begun the process of shutting down. That's not even including 4% of Indian startups that have shut up. You might be thinking that perhaps everything's going to be okay because the lockdown now is slowly being lifted. Still, the lockdown isn't entirely over yet.
At this point, 70% of startups have two months or less of cash left.
It will just say it now necessity is the mother of invention. It's often during humanity's darkest moments that entrepreneurs and inventors and creators emerge from the work to create unique solutions in an attempt to mitigate some of the sufferings that have infected the world.
Here's a couple of companies that you've probably heard of Airbnb, Square, Whatsapp, and Instagram they're all unicorns, and there are also some of the most successful startups in the world.
But I think that a lot of people forget that these companies were also founded but in 2008 and 2010, which is when the world was going through the Great Recession.
So here's what I'm trying to say here every crisis is also an opportunity because to an extent the playing field has been leveled trends have been disrupted.
Let's take a look at some of the business opportunities that the coronavirus pandemic and the financial recession that has come as a result, have presented India.
EdTech Startup:
Let's talk about EdTech if you're Indian then you know how important education is in this country, but even if you're not Indian the numbers make it very clear there are approximately 1.5 million schools in this country and the number of students
is expected to reach 280 million by 2021.
It makes India one of the largest education ecosystems in the entire world. That's just kindergarten to grade 12 that we're talking about here. There are also nearly a thousand universities in the country, and 40 million students enrolled in India's higher education system.
The pandemic sent India into lockdown a majority of this education was happening offline now though things have changed schools and colleges have been shut down.
Even when they reopen, I guess that a lot of parents will be hesitant to send their kids back to school, mainly if the novel coronavirus is still infecting new people.
With COVID 19 it's not just about individuals if your kid picks up COVID 19 at school that means that your other children will get it you will get it your spouse will get it your parents will get it.
EdTech has become so indispensable to Indian parents and their children, and India's Edtech startups are responding to this demand. Many have offered products and services free of cost for some time during the lockdown so that the education of millions of Indian students isn't disrupted.
As an example of what's happened here in the EdTech, let's take a look at India's only EdTech unicorn BYJU'S looking up free the startup has over 50 million registered users on its platform, and 13.5 million of these 50 million started BYJU'S between March and April.
Unacademy's founder and CEO, Gaurav Munjal, said that the company's revenue for April alone surpassed their combined revenues of the year's 2017 & 2018.
Now I'm not saying that Edtech is going to eliminate the popularity of offline schools. Still, its value proposition has been made abundantly clear to parents, students, and educators in a way that just wouldn't have been possible before the pandemic people have been forced to see the value of Edtech they've been forced to test it out.
Video Conferencing Startup:
Let's talk about video conferencing for many people working from home has become the new healthy. As a result, the use of video conferencing apps and software for professional use has exploded. In particular, one name has become more or less global across the world's business landscape, and that name is zoom.
Eric Yuan founded the Zoom video conferencing startup in 2011, and the company has spent the last decade essentially preparing itself for this moment.
It is now the go-to video conferencing app for companies like Uber, Zendesk, Logitech, Dropbox Pandora, NASA, Autodesk, Rakuten, and many others.
In December of 2019, Zoom had ten million daily active users, but in coronavirus pandemic, millions of people worldwide have been working from home since the start of the novel. That number has grown to over 300 million daily active users across its video conferencing and remote collaboration platforms, which is an insane 30x growth.
Zoom is the most popular video conferencing platform; that doesn't mean that other platforms haven't enjoyed similar growth because of COVID 19. Google and Microsoft have scaled their video conferencing platforms since the pandemic began Google Meet became free in March of 2020.
They've also seen a 30x growth with 3 billion minutes of video meetings being conducted daily Microsoft teams, on the other hand, have surpassed 44 million daily active users, which is more than double the 20 million that it reported in November of 2019.
Skype, which is also owned by Microsoft, has seen its average daily users increased by 70 percent month-over-month, even Skype to Skype calling minutes have increased by 220 percent okay, so that's all well and good.
What about India? First, let's talk about Jio; they might be a little bit late to this; they set to launch their own video conferencing platform called Jio Meet, while this doesn't technically fall under video conferencing.
I thought it would be worth mentioning air meet.
Air meet is a Bangalore based online event platform that enables its customers to host live online events for up to a million guests.
However, what sets air meet apart is that they allow guests to network and interact with each other while the event is taking place.
The founder and CEO of air meet Lalit Mongo, said that air meet witnessed a nearly 10x growth that's 1,000 percent growth in video consumption on our platform compared to the pre-COVID times.
Online Grocery Delivery Startup:
Let's talk about online grocery delivery. For years online grocery delivery has been one of the most robust markets for Indian startups to crack. The reason for this is the spaces low-profit margins, and high rates startups either need to raise a massive amount of funds or generate enough orders to cover their costs with massive revenues.
One of these things is easy to accomplish; that said, the potential for growth in this market for the startups who manage to survive is a vast online food and grocery retail makeup.
Just 0.2 percent of India's overall retail market that number though expected to reach 1.2 percent by 2023. Now I know what you're thinking about 1.2 percent doesn't sound like a lot; however, it equates to ten point five billion dollars; that said, grocery shopping has up until recently been exclusively an offline activity for most Indian people.
But, everything on this list the COVID-19 has changed that now in 2020, people have a choice they can either go out and shop at crowded markets or can order groceries with the safety and convenience of their own homes.
This results in tremendous growth for grocery delivery startups. Take the example of NDS 2 grocery delivery unicorns big basket and grow firs before the lockdown began big basket was fulfilling around 150,000 orders every day now though they're fulfilling double that 300 thousand orders per day increase.
On the other hand, they saw a 100 percent surge in demand in the first week of the lockdown. Now, they see a 60 percent growth in daily grocery merchandise volume compared to pre-COVID-19 levels besides platforms that are exclusively focusing on grocery delivery e-commerce.
Amazon and Flipkart have also taken the opportunity presented to them by COVID-19 to scale up their grocery delivery segments.
Mainly because for an extended delivery time of all non-essential products was entirely halted by the government. The demand for online groceries was so massive that no service from any startup was able to keep up; instead, these startups were forced to stop taking orders to fulfill pending ones.
But what's going to happen once this demand subsides when markets are safe, and you don't need to stand in little white circles. At the same time, you wait in a queue outside of your local Khurana shop well. It's hard to predict what the post-COVID-19 shopping experience is going to look like for Indian people.
If grocery delivery startups do a good enough job of enticing people to stay on their platforms with competitive prices and discounts and a headache-free delivery process, then people might end up deciding to shop exclusively online instead of using the time and energy required to go out.
Industry experts are already predicting that online grocery shopping sales will equate to three billion dollars this year, a vast seventy-three percent jump from last year 1.7 billion all right next up.
Gaming Startup
Let's talk about gaming the rise in popularity of gaming for the last few months can be attributed to the same thing that has caused an increase in demand for over-the-top streaming platforms, people having lots of free time, and nowhere to go.
According to a Google and KPMG report, India's online gaming market expects to go from 290 million dollars in 2017 to 1 billion dollars by 2021 again though that study is from before the pandemic, and by 2021 this market may be much bigger than 1 billion dollars.
Firstly let's take a look at popular mobile gaming tournament platform Mobile Premier League the company's VP of growth and marketing. Abhishek Madhavan said that
number of playtime of their games has increased by 55% between March and April of this year. Specifically, for the most popular game world cricket championship, they've seen a 100% increase in playtime.
Paytm first games witnessed a massive 200% growth in its user base in March, gaining a staggering 75 thousand users every day. The majority of its users are coming from India's metros; the company saw a rise in the number of users coming from Tier two and tier three cities.
The rising popularity of mobile games here in India during this pandemic and now that more people than ever before are trying mobile gaming out for the first time can expect this industry to benefit in the long run from this spike seen in players.
Alright, guys, there you have it; those are some of the sectors and companies that have benefited and grown most during times of crisis.
I hope that you enjoyed this article, and if you did, I would love it even to leave a comment down below.
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