Vinay Kaushal: The crisis has brought the entire activity to a standstill

What has been the impact of Covid-19 on your business thus far?

The business is standstill beyond explanation. It was already affected by the slowdown before the Corona crisis. The crisis and the subsequent lockdown have brought the entire activity to a standstill.

In the short term, how are you assessing the risks and planning for the possible impact?

Considering the very unique nature of this crisis (first time in life of everyone world over), it is very difficult to assess the likely potential impact. Until we are sure of which direction the spread is going and how long we will be under lockdown, it’s virtually impossible to assess anything presently. The damage has been very severe and it’s not over yet. In fact, going by the reports, India has not yet peaked and coming days will be very critical.

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?

Working from home is not very effective for our kind of business where customer interaction in field is required. However with lockdown, every activity has been on standstill as our customers are also under lockdown. For our team members, we are taking this opportunity for knowledge enhancement with at least one session of two hours daily. This serves two purposes — one is that we are interacting with them on daily basis knowing how they are coping up and second, knowledge sharing happening between team which was not possible earlier engineer were on constant move and difficult to bring them together on regular basis.

How is your company staying in touch with your partners / customers?

We are in constant touch with our customers though these interactions are just normal as no business activity of any sort is happening. We are also in touch with our principals and are constantly updating them with the situation in India.

Do you invest in health care, and is there a robust system in place?

Yes. We do have a medical coverage in place for all the team members. However, going forward, we will have to think differently on this factor.

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 you?

 This crisis will change the way will live in the world post this. Printing may also undergo changes and one interesting project for me will be to use technology and creativity to make print value added with possible protection from virus transmission.

One suggestion for the government?

The government has done well so far and the steps taken and management of this lockdown is commendable considering the diverse nature of India (geographically, politically, lack of discipline, etc). Businesses have suffered very severe damage and getting back on track is going to be a uphill task in coming days. With very little resources, small and medium sector companies will have to make tough decisions to survive and government support and handholding will be absolutely essential. This is a time for survival and we should forget about the economic indicators and rating. If the business survives, all these can be repaired in time. The first priority at all cost now should be to safeguard businesses from going bust thereby retaining employment. Explosion in mass unemployment will be a disastrous crisis than Corona.