These companies thought out of the box and created products and solutions to keep their workers employed, paid and insured while helping customers to get what they need. Below we list four companies that made proactive efforts to offset the impact of the pandemic on their customers, clients and employees.

Swiggy

During the Covid lockdown, there was a huge dip in the number of orders the food delivery startup, Swiggy was receiving on a daily basis. The startup was forced to cut costs and innovate to survive the downturn. Swiggy then entered the daily delivery grocery sector to provide viable income to its delivery partners and hassle-free grocery delivery to its massive consumer base.  As demand for at-home grocery delivery surged, this new business line by Swiggy helped people to find alternatives to get essentials delivered.         

Advantage Club

Advantage Club is one of India’s largest employee engagement platforms that creates a mutually beneficial relationship between large and small scale companies with other businesses and vendors to offer exclusive rewards, services and products to employees in the partnered organisations. Once the pandemic began, the company had to conceptualise a new strategy to add additional value to their partnership with their clients. The company came up with a Fight Covid Programme to help companies get back to office. Under the programme, a multi-step plan was offered for making offices Covid proof and included sanitisation chambers, workplace disinfection, PPE kits, Covid screening, and informational posters. The service also included an offering of health insurance for employees through partner firms.

Advantage Club’s offering was in line with its employee-centred business model and was aimed to make the workplace safe and secure.

Healthians

Healthians is one of India’s largest at-home health test service providers, and it has come at the forefront of the war against the pandemic through its various initiatives that were launched to help its customers and the Indian populace. Even during the pandemic, the company continued its usual operations and launched services like HPlus CorpShield for Covid screening among corporates, Covid Helpline and ChatBot, Drive-thru Covid sample collection, At-home Covid screening, etc.

The pandemic saw a dramatic fall in blood donations due to restrictions and lockdowns. In light of the situation, the company launched a blood donation service to save lives, and the service is free of charge for all. This service is integrated into the Healthians app and almost instantaneously connects consenting donors with the people in need.

Urban Company

Urban Company, formerly known as Urban Clap, is back at 90% of its pre-Covid business levels within five months since the lockdown began. This is a considerable achievement for the company as their business model relies on service professionals visiting the homes of their customers. This boost in the company’s business comes at the back of Mission Shakti — an initiative that was launched to protect the health, safety and well-being of its customers, service partners & employees.

Under the initiative, the company also set up Rs 1.5 Cr for its service workers and an Rs 11 crore in interest-free loans for businesses operating in partnership with the company.

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After expanding to three new cities Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Jaipur over the last three months, Bangalore-bases food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy is launching its service south Indian cities of Coimbatore and Kochi.

People in Kochi and Coimbatore will now have their food delivered at at their doorsteps with multiple payment options.

Both the cities witness an amalgamation of interesting cuisines. Coimbatore’s culinary culture consists of a diverse mix of cosmopolitan taste that meets its deep-rooted traditional cuisine. Kochi, on the other hand, is one of biggest cultural and financial hubs of Kerala. It boasts of the pan-Indian culinary culture, mixed along with Middle-eastern flavors.

“As India’s largest food ordering and delivery platform, Southern India is pivotal to our vision of ‘Changing the way India Eats’. Coimbatore and Kochi are some of the fastest growing Indian cities, that have a thriving local culinary culture. People of Coimbatore are passionate about their food and take immense pride in their diverse local cuisine. Swiggy will provide them with the convenience of relishing their favourite meals with just a touch of a button,” said Srivats TS, Vice President – Marketing at Swiggy.

“Kochi is a melting pot of culture, art and tradition, and the same reflects in their cuisine, we are excited to bring our lightning fast deliveries to this thriving metropolis,” he added.

Swiggy has more than 25,000 restaurants partners across thirteen cities in the country.

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Bangalore-based food ordering and delivery startup Swiggy has raised $80 million in Series E funding, led by Naspers, a global internet and entertainment group.

Earlier investors Accel India, SAIF Partners India, Bessemer Venture Partners, Harmony Partners and Norwest Venture Partners have joined the round.

As per agreement, Ashutosh Sharma, head of investments in India for Naspers will join the Swiggy board.

The new funds will propel the next phase of Swiggy’s growth by introducing a suite of new product and service offerings to enhance its superlative customer experience, it said in a press release. Swiggy also announced plans to double its technology headcount and increase investments across core engineering, automation, data sciences, machine learning and personalisation.

Launched in 2015, Swiggy is a leading one-stop solution for consumers’ food needs. It claims its innovative technology, large delivery service, and customer focus enable a host of benefits including lightning fast deliveries, live order tracking, no restrictions on minimum order amounts, and strong customer support.

“In a span of three years, Swiggy has been instrumental in changing the way India eats by delivering delightful customer experiences. This investment by Naspers is further testimony to Swiggy’s vision and performance,” said Sriharsha Majety, co-founder and CEO, Swiggy.

“As the market leader, we are leveraging our deep understanding of the Indian consumer and the gaps in the market to introduce disruptive and highly differentiated service offerings; making online food ordering and delivery more seamless and reliable to users everywhere,” he added.

Swiggy has partnered with 12,000 restaurants across eight locations in India, including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai.

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Swiggy has started offering a limited menu in Koramangala from its cloud kitchen model, as part of which it is collaborating with popular restaurants in a joint venture to offer a selection where the restaurant does not have a physical presence. The Swiggy platform facilitates lead generation, payment and delivery of orders for its partner restaurants.

‘We are looking at extending the food tech and delivery continuum by creating a platform where multiple brands can work from a single kitchen (external or Swiggy) to meet consumer demand in certain pockets of the city,’ said a Swiggy spokesperson .

‘This, along with our other initiatives like the single kitchen initiative with partner restaurants, is primarily aimed at creating a basket of options to meet consumer demand.’ The company will scale up the pilot programme in due course, according to the spokesperson.

‘These experiments are conducted at a small scale to ensure all problems are fixed in the test phase itself. We have been testing cloud kitchens for three months now. We hope to use this initiative to provide consumers in all areas with the best possible options for them to order from,’ the spokesperson said.

The company raised Rs 100 crore from investors led by Bessemer Venture Partners in September last year and delivered nearly 45,000 orders per day across eight cities during the month, with a target of delivering one lakh orders by December 2016.

It competes with restaurant discovery and aggregation platform Zomato, which reached 10 lakh orders per month in July 2016. Zomato mostly helps in discovery and transaction of orders, with 80% of its orders being fulfilled by restaurants themselves, according to data provided in June last year.

Zomato said that it will help partner-restaurants set up kitchens instead of competing with them. ‘The biggest focus area for an end-to end food platform is the quality of food. Aggregation business, on the other hand, is about the customer experience. Our mission is to empower people to building successful F&B businesses. We feel running our own kitchens puts us in direct competition with them, which we do not want,’ said a Zomato spokesperson.

The spokesperson further said, ‘Even as part of Zomato Infrastructure Services, we are working on providing the necessary infrastructure to restaurants to make it easy for them to set up a delivery business.’ With a focus on unit economics, Swiggy last year made strategic changes to its business including charging convenience fee on orders of less than a minimum value and surge charges of Rs 20 during peak delivery hours.

The company has partnered third party last-mile delivery company Shadowfax for peak volumes. The food technology sector saw consolidation and pivots as a strategy for survival for the companies last year. Food ordering platform TinyOwl merged with Runnr to form a food ordering platform focused on corporates, offering limited menu from restaurants around the location.

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