Industry leaders advised that enterprises should adapt to living with COVID-19 and make small changes in their approach to tide over the crisis
At a time when businesses in India across the spectrum are anticipating staggering losses due to the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown that is now extended by two weeks, industry leaders at the IHW Council’s web summit advised that enterprises should adapt to living with COVID-19 and make small changes in their approach to tide over the crisis.
Discussing the challenges faced by the private healthcare sector since the beginning of the pandemic, Dr Dharminder Nagar, Managing Director, Paras Healthcare, said, “These are very challenging times – private hospitals have suffered a loss of Rs 7,000 crore in April and are likely to lose anything between Rs 12-21,000 crore in the first quarter. While the medium and long-term outlook is good, we need to survive the short-term. The strategy now is more political, social, and economic, rather than healthcare-oriented. We need policies that will help us overcome the shock.”
“COVID will become a part of our life so enterprises have to focus on new safety norms such as regular sanitisation, social distancing, wearing a mask and make these a part of the work culture. Employees working from home and tools for enterprise resource planning (ERP) will play a crucial role – in the new norm, redundant tasks will be eliminated, smaller teams will be formed and those who take an extra initiative will survive,” said Dr Vivek Bindra, Motivational Speaker & CEO, Bada Business.
“For businesses, this is the time to show character – stand by your partners, stakeholders, and employees. Cut down on unnecessary costs and travel, and restructure the organisation to a certain extent to make it more efficient and productive. There can be small, short-term blips but the situation will stabilise in two or three quarters, there will be a rebound around December or January, in terms of market, jobs, and economy,” said Paresh Chaudhry, Corporate Brand Custodian, Adani Group.
Speaking about the slow uptake of technology in the Indian healthcare sector, Savitha Kuttan, Founder & CEO, Omnicuris said, “In healthcare, we have been a laggard and our uptake of technology was rather slow. Technology adoption is key for the making our doctors skilled to deal with a situation like the ongoing pandemic and the authorities should look for ways immediately to ramp up the capacity of our doctors through technology so that they can effectively handle increased screening and diagnosis, which is why some universities have collaborated with Omnicuris for their students. Besides, tech-based platforms such as the Aarogya Setu app that screens for COVID-19 patients and has a high adoption can be used for surveillance of other diseases such as tuberculosis.”
The virtual summit on discussing ways to overcome the crisis caused by COVID-19, organised by the Integrated Health and Wellbeing (IHW) Council, in association with Omnicuris was also attended by Dr Shuchin Bajaj, Founder, Director, Ujala Cygnus Hospital, Vivek Tiwari, CEO, Medikabazaar, Sridhar Ranganathan, CEO, Helyxon Healthcare Solutions, Anshu Gupta, Founder, Director, Goonj, Rajesh Aggarwal, Managing Director, Insecticides India, Dr Radha Rangarajan, Chief Scientific Officer, HealthCube, and Dr Atul Kapoor, Managing Director, Regency Healthcare.
Kamal Narayan, CEO, IHW Council, said, “The pandemic was a sudden disaster nobody was prepared for. As a result, people are suffering not only because of the virus, but also due to the prolonged suspension of businesses and earnings. This humanitarian crisis has also altered our priorities to a great extent which will drive organisations to humanise their businesses. The situation is so dynamic that formulating a ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy to open and revitalise the economy seems inadequate. The rural economy will need a special focus – this can be an opportunity to revive the agriculture sector to ensure long-term food security and give the farmers the importance they deserve.”
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