The outbreak of Coronavirus has brought many changes in our daily lives. Amid this change, many industries are benefitting while many others are on the other end. Among the industries benefitted from Coronavirus are e-commerce, media, and pharmaceutical while almost all the other industries are on the losing end.
The e-commerce industry has gained the most so far from the Coronavirus, as the people who are working from or home or not going out, are ordering more. The sales of food, cloth, grocery items, with firms like Flipkart, Amazon, Bigbasket and Grofers registered 30 per cent growth in order.
“In the last two weeks, there has been at least a 25 per cent spike in orders. This has put extra pressure on the delivery network,” said an e-commerce industry executive, as per a report by Business Standard.
Vegetarian food, Ayurvedic items, noodles, staple food, and personal hygiene items have registered huge growth in the last few days.
“There is even a huge spike in pet food,” said a person.
“We have seen a very clear uptick in terms of orders, which have grown by 20-30 per cent compared to last month, and it is picking up pace as more people decide to order online,” said Vipul Parekh, co-founder of Bigbasket. “It is partly driven by new customers coming online because they don’t want to go to the (physical) stores, and there are also existing customers who are stocking up much more products over fears of things running out,” he added.
After the newsbreak of Coronavirus and lockdown of Wuhan, most of the government in Asia, and most importantly the people of these countries, started taking pre-emptive measures for safety.
In India, despite one of the lowest number of reported cases, the majority of the people on road could be seen with masks on their face and sanitizers in their pockets. This is not limited to India; most of the Asian countries including Japan, South Korea and Thailand, have one the best recovery ratio; least number of deaths; and very low number of reported cases, thanks to pre-emptive measures taken by the people and swift response of the government.
On the other hand, Europe is not prepared to fight against Europe as the people took no pre-emptive measures as they Coronavirus as third world country disease, and the governments on the continent, as usual, were lethargic.
A few days ago, writing on the lack of preparedness of Italy against the Coronavirus, the Italian journalist Mattia Ferraresi wrote that, “I and many other Italians just did not see the need to change our routines for a threat we could not see.”
Due to the outbreak of Corona, even the tier-II and tier-II cities are witnessing a huge surge in demand of necessities like soap, hand sanitizers. “In the last 15 days, the demand for sanitizers has increased by 559 per cent, face mask has increased by 334 per cent, hand wash has increased by 81 per cent, and disposable gloves has increased by 66 per cent,” said Sandip Chhetri, COO, TradeIndia.com, an online business-to-business platform. “Apart from the three major cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru), there has been a surge in demand in cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Gurugram, Surat, Pune and Srinagar,” said Chhetri.
The industries like e-commerce, media, medical and pharmaceuticals are making big gains, while all others are in red. The media industry, given the panic over the coronavirus, is making big gains. The people are stick to TV and average viewing hours have gone up exponentially. The medical industry is making big gains due to high sales of Ayurvedic medicine like Giloy, immunity boosters, hand sanitizers, and masks.