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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In an internal communication, Taskbob co-founder and CEO Aseem Khare said the company shut down its operations as of January 19 due to unforeseen circumstances. ‘…due to unforeseen circumstances, Taskbob will be shutting down its operations as of 19th January. All the orders already placed in the system will be duly processed,’ he said. The number of employees impacted could not be ascertained. While Khare did not spell out the reason for the closure, he indicated that the company was unable to build scalability and profitability.

‘Even though, we could create a significant difference in customers’, service providers’ and teams’ lives, a solid business is created only by building scalability and profitability. And to achieve those in a low margin business and in a tough external market proved unexpectedly daunting. More than what anyone could have expected,’ he said.

Set up in December 2014 by Khare, Abhiroop Medhekar, Ajay Bhatt and Amit Chahalia, the company had raised over $5 million in funding from IvyCap Ventures and Orios Venture Partners. It had also acquired Zepper, a Bengaluru-based home services startup

The company, which had raised its last round of funding in February 2016, competed with the likes of UrbanClap and HouseJoy. It claims to have served over 1.5 lakh orders in the past two years.

Last year, some of the startups that shut shop included Snapdeal-backed PepperTap and AskMe. Thousands of startups have mushroomed across the country and many of them have successfully raised funding from investors in the last two-three years. However, high cash-burn forced many of them to scale down, shut operations or sell their business.

‘…even though Taskbob is shutting down operations, the Taskbob spirit will stay alive… we have shared the list of all Taskbob verified service professionals – across electricians, plumbers, carpenters, appliance repairmen, house cleaners, car cleaners, drivers, etc on the Taskbob App. These are carefully screened, background verified & police verified, trained and skilled. You could directly call them whenever you are in trouble next time,’ he said, adding ‘we will be back soon, better, stronger.’

Picture credit: Pixabay

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