Even as the demonetisation announcement of November 8 and its fallout continue to receive mixed reactions, aspiring entrepreneurs took to maneuvering strategically, taking several measures to make people, especially the underprivileged, aware about the ban and helping them ease their woes.
This, they say is not just promoting goodwill of the society or some CSR activity, but their very business.
“It’s hard to fully fathom widespread impact of this move right now. With cash on delivery soon to become another chapter in the history books, we have come up with alternate payment options to fully capitalise on the same,” said Abhiraj Bhal, Co-Founder, UrbanClap.
So what do other entrepreneurs say about this move, the fallout of which is still to be completed?
Impact on Healthcare: Delay in treatment for patients
Hundreds of millions of people have been queueing up in front of banks and ATMs across the country ever since the announcement of November 8. Coming to their rescue, Delhi-based diagnosis at home service, Healthians has set up free health camps to monitor the level of stress of individuals standing in queues for long hours. During check-ups conducted at banks, the most common health issues detected were high BP and rise in blood sugar.
Speaking, Deepak Sahni, CEO & Founder of Healthians said, “Overall, the healthcare sector certainly has seen an impact with a dip in the number of patients going for health checkups and diagnostic tests. There has been up to a 60% decline in the number of requests for home care services, diagnostic tests and other healthcare services excluding emergency treatment at hospitals.”
The impact might well continue for the next 3-6 months, until everyone collects enough cash for daily services and accumulate enough to pay for such services.
“Unfortunately, in India, health has always been our last priority until there is an emergency and in shortage of cash these are further ignored which could result in delay or complications in many cases,” added Sahni.
Challenge for B2B ecommerce platforms
“For B2B ecommerce platforms like us, we have seen a short term slump in economic activity as most players have COD as the sole payment option. However, in the long term we foresee that this move would benefit the society as a whole,” said Bhairavi Madhusudan, Director, back2basics.
Most COD orders on this platform are tax paid by B2B buyers. So in the long run, even that should not be impacted, say experts calling demonetisation as a positive move.
Job creation in the long term
The rural segment are heavy cash users and have been affected by the cash crunch post demonetisation.
Siddharth Gupta, Vice President, Marketing, AasaanJobs said, “People in the lower strata are not aware about the ban and are unaware about how to exchange their old currency from the banks and the various rules around that. We conducted an awareness drive at Mumbai with the purpose to convey to people as to how they can deal with the demonetization initiative.”
Job seekers have also been affected. “We observed that the number of registrations on a daily basis have decreased drastically and we feel it is a temporary drop in the platform in term of searches. There was a 20% dip in traffic,” Gupta added.
Source: The Indian Express
