During the on-going Covid-19 pandemic ravaging the world, companies are in an overdrive to survive amid economic gloom. While many companies vanished without a trace, some emerged as authentic, innovative and resilient leaders who pivoted from their traditional market to help employees, customers and businesses fight this pandemic.
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.