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In a fascinating episode of ‘Off the Cuff’ with Shekhar Gupta of the Print, Fareed Zakaria claims that the global pandemic has accelerated a lot of trends & behaviors across the world. On the face of it; this seems rather counterintuitive — how can shutdowns speed up the world?
But then it starts to make sense.
In the US, tensions around racial discrimination and the BLM movement are at the boiling point; political winds seem to be shifting even if they haven’t changed direction completely. Think about India’s confrontation with China — we have gone from Bonhomie to the brink of war and now disengagement in less than six months.
Perhaps these conflicts have been years in the making; but what brings them to tipping point today? So maybe the Coronavirus is in fact — speeding up the world.
This is equally true within the world of technology/media/startups/ whatever you want to call it.
Since the 23rd of March 2020; across multiple sectors — we’ve witnessed a growth in adoption that would have ordinarily taken many years.
I’m going to run through a couple of different industries here — and you’ll notice that across industries & companies — the daily active users or percentage of people using a particular app has consistently gone up.
For people who couldn’t step out or get to a bank — a problem it seems Indians were better prepared for this time — it seems digital payment platforms have offered a lifeline. Even if the volume & value of transactions is lower — the fact that people are using it more implies greater adoption.
In E-Commerce too; the pandemic & lockdowns — though painful for companies — eventually made platforms like Flipkart & Amazon — critical for a lot of people.
Ain’t that something? MX Player has this amazing strategy — it’s the gift that keeps giving — I may not be a big fan of their content but India seems to like it. Amazon Prime Video & Netflix — both have nearly tripled engagement! For Hotstar though (despite the new content from Disney); there is a loss in engagement over time — perhaps this is due to a comparatively limited content library and the set back that came with the cancellation of the IPL. It’ll be interesting to see how the rescheduled IPL in the UAE will revise its fortunes.
For years, we complained about how we slavishly commute back & forth through heavy traffic and near-death experiences (Delhi) — just to sit through meetings that could’ve been an e-mail to finally end. And now, here we are ‘WFH-ing’ — isn’t it wonderful? 😬
To get a sense of how crazy this change is — you don’t have to look far. For people, life is literally coming to a stop. And nowhere is that change is more drastic than the mobility and travel sectors — business that literally moves people.
Enter the virtual office? Nearly every sector that involves any type of travel — local or domestic has seen a downshift in demand that is yet to recover even as cities ‘unlock’. Even if there are temporary spurts in usage — the overall trend is clear.
On a side note, it is easier for smaller companies to recover to previous usage levels than it is for larger ones — since the scale of recovery is much smaller. Percentages are relative so don’t be surprised if smaller companies perform better than larger ones in this regard.
But getting back to the point, perhaps these economic shutdowns are the very things that accelerate decisions we’ve all been thinking about but putting off for years — shifting base to Goa? Letting people work remotely? Set their own office hours? Now that we’ve been forced to make changes maybe the rest of our ‘radical’ ideas will become more acceptable.
Thanks for your time,
- Aman
Team KG
P.S. In case you’re interested in the ‘off the cuff’ conversation between Fareed Zakaria & Shekhar Gupta — you can find the link here.
