How Coronavirus is affecting Small Businesses?

With this global panic pandemic causing widespread fear and loss of lives, if there is something that is worst affected, then it has to be the small businesses. Long lockdown periods and social distancing are inevitable yet the sole reasons behind this hopeless state. Traders are staring at an unpredictable future.

The uncertainty of the future is at its peak and the only thing you can do now is - keep your fingers crossed, adopt new strategies in business, and hope for the best so that you are able to run your business from the comfort of your home when you are left with no other possibility.

Let's observe closely the challenges that small businesses are facing:

A steep decrease in customers

Customers are the assets of any company. They bring you the sole reason why any business should continue its working and operation. But when you accept the harsh reality, you are likely to agree with a decrease in the footfall of the customer and that is a but obvious scenario. However, you can still be keen on how can a living motion without the arousal of any necessity? There you crack it..!! Necessity bears a demanding space and it needs to be backed. Now it's up to you what you do next.

You can always consider the example of Metro cash and carry, India.

Win of online over offline

There is no way people can move out and continue their shopping and business-like normal days back then. But business needs to sustain its existence. So better to shutter down, rolling your business online can be a rescuer. The challenge lies to all those unaware entrepreneurs who lack the skills of how to implement these in their business. People as well learners have already taken a trump on this and have started moving.

Decrease in employees

Everyone is restricted to four walls. This "everyone" includes your employees too. Adding, Personal hygiene should be prioritized over everything, and hence at this time: work from home is the best option. It might also happen that the number of employees needed to work may not be equal to the number of employees willing to work. It is a hard time and all new for them to cope with all of a sudden. Allow then some time to ensconce themselves with the situation.

Hit to Supply and Demand

The Coronavirus outbreak across the countries have hampered both the supply and demand in the local economy as a result of which major industry leaders have lowered their forecasted revenue for the last quarter of FY20. This in return affects those SMEs ( Small Medium Enterprises) who largely depend on these big industries for their daily business run. All these factors combined have impacted sentiment in a negative way resulting in a market panic.

Traditional Marketing to be hampered

With this major lockdown everywhere, reaching out to customers will be a little difficult and you will have a tough time. People belong to traditional platforms. Something that doesn't come to them over and over again like on tv commercials, radio, newspapers, leaflets, brochure, banner ads does not win enough. Eliminating traditional forms of marketing can be tough but you can definitely make the best use of social media platforms to deliver insightful messages to increase your followers.

Maintain the aged

With the new changes in the operations, it brings with itself a plethora of challenges. Delivering the same old quality, while possessing the same old values for which your brand was always known, can be complicated. Since you have to start with a different approach, almost functioning everything online right from marketing to persuading new acquisition of customers, you have to act smart enough to win all of these together. After all, you cannot put your goodwill at stake in one go.

Hurdle in Expanding

Since there is a decline in the business's sales and revenue, businesses feel helpless to expand their business. As the shutdown and new techniques at a starting edge have not resulted in much, business feels it on the knee to take the business forward and earn more.

With the level of uncertainty rocketing up, you are bound to face challenges. With businesses failing and revenues falling, the only thing you can do is expect the unexpected. But this will not only change the way the entrepreneurs conduct business but will introduce all SMEs to explore a new era of savvied techniques.

However, amidst the difficult situation, the good thing is, as more companies are switching to remote workplaces, Indian tech startups are likely to become popular with this increase in demand.