Siddharth Kejriwal: Right now, the focus is to stay afloat

What has been the impact on your business thus far?
The impact is significant, considering that all our plants are shut and revenue is zero. Also we are a critical part of the supply chain for essentials but unable to operate due to various concerns around approval, availability of manpower and material movement inward and outward.

In the short term, how are you assessing the risks and planning for the possible impact?
Right now, the focus is to prepare the cash flows to stay afloat in this lockdown period. There are fixed overheads and costs which cannot be avoided and with zero revenue, conserving cash is of prime importance. Right now, our focus is safety of our people, support to our manpower to best possible extent and to be in communication with our customers to share the ground level situation.

Some businesses have acted, asking staff to work from home, doing daily temperature checks, distributing critical tasks across offices, and restricting travel. What steps have you undertaken?
All the above steps have been taken and the staff is using this time form home to continue doing work which is possible. But with none of the plants operational, a lot of work comes to a complete standstill and issues arising due to this, takes precedence over everything else.

How is your company staying in touch with your partners/ customers?
Right now it’s very important to communicate as much as we can with all stakeholders and we are continuously doing that through internet via e mail and video conferencing and phone calls.

Do you invest in health care, and is there a robust system in place?
Yes, we have a health insurance policy in place for all our employees and their families and we also organise regular health check-up camps.

Confluence of creativity and technology will be the key to crafting a successful future in print. One creative print project which can make a difference?
Digital print allows us to react quickly by using technology effectively. In these trying times, we produced folding cartons for masks in 24 hours and supplied them.

One suggestion for the government?
I think it’s a tough time for the government to manage a country of 1.3-billion people where the only prevention is social distancing and the economic implications of that. We would only urge the government to support all businesses through financial aid so that they can in turn support their employees. This must be done as we fight the battle against Covid-19.