As we are aware that the entire world is experiencing a troublesome time because of the novel Coronavirus outburst and since our entire nation was under lockdown from March 2020, the pressure of downturn is more on the businessmen than the pressure of Coronavirus. It is said that a huge number of Indian organizations are battling with dazzle vulnerability about their future.

Dr. Dinesh Singh, Co-Founder, and Director at Faad Network Pvt. Ltd throws light on how to sustain economic growth during this pandemic.

 Further, International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected a GDP growth for India by 1.9% in 2020, because the global economy is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Economists suspect the fiscal year that began in April 2020, will see the worst economic contraction in 40 years.

 We being a news portal, find it our primary duty to keep the morale of our Indian start-ups & entrepreneurs high by reporting on how some individuals are working round the clock so our health and jobs are secured.

 In this initiative, we catch up with some of India's leading investors and entrepreneurs on how to adopt the survival strategies for businesses of the Indian startup ecosystem during COVID-19 lockdown and manage resources to stay afloat.

 We hope our series will help the entrepreneurs struggling during lockdown and SME's who are trying to beat the pandemic and do best for their business. So read on to spot the opportunities, mistakes, and overall how to correct your course of plans so that the business heads in the right direction.

 Focus on Collaboration, not on Competition

“There are a lot of resources that can be pooled across sectors because of the similarity of our portfolio companies in serving the end consumers. We have seen that at such times, we should focus on One 'C' – Collaboration and not the other one – Competition. And that’s what we have been promoting within our companies. Some of our portfolio which got e – passes to deliver have been guiding the other portfolio who were seeking it. Our healthcare portfolio has been helping the workers of our other portfolio to ensure that everyone is safe. These are only a few of the outlying cases and there are more.  We have also been guiding them with additional capital at such times,” says Dr. Dinesh Singh, Co-founder and Director at 'Faad Network' elaborating on a better way that can help portfolio companies oversee the economic losses during this COVID–19 situation.

 How to avoid a monetary log jam

The entire world is experiencing a troublesome time because of the pandemic situation. Here are the views of the Director of 'Faad Network' on How New businesses need to recalibrate and resize their techniques, to avoid a monetary log jam in the current economic climate.

 He explains that they need to go back to the drawing board and think of the short term, quick - fast measures to ensure that they don’t go out of business. Especially, early-stage startups need to find alternative methods to see how they can generate revenue. Since grants and donations by many Government, Quasi-Government, and NGOs are at bay, the startups can leverage the resources for short term financing. Bridge Capital can be a good covenant to growth and can ensure the survivability of the company in this economic slowdown and beyond.

 Encouraging Entrepreneurs & Survival strategies

Since Dr. Dinesh is a business person he understands that business and excursion is constantly considered as a roller coaster ride, in such a scenario when the nation is battling with COVID -19 pandemic and lockdown, Dr. Singh suggested some survival strategies which can be taken, he says “Truly, the journey of an entrepreneur is a roller coaster ride. And that’s what I love about it. The fact that you can never be sure what things would consistently turn out to be. It is the closest to real-life experience for me, and that also motivated me to leave my corporate career and practice to do this full time.” He encourages the future of the Indian startups by asking them to simply go out there in the playing field and appreciate the efforts put in.

“You will commit errors and learn and fall once more. Continue falling until one day you will rise. Coronavirus is a momentary pandemic – simply like the one that followed previously. It's not a matter of WHAT but a matter of WHEN. So be dynamic on the ground, focus on main concerns – even take a short term financing for it. If your model is strong, you will be fine,” he says.

 Dr. Singh’s appreciates the Action COVID19 Team (ACT) movement, which is a first-of-its-kind initiative by Top VCs and entrepreneurs with INR 100 CR grant which is launched to provide resources and guidance to startup founders and employees, he says, “This was really needed for the ecosystem. Time and again – entrepreneurs have been at Investors to say that they aren’t empathetic and only care about money. This is a good answer that was due to the ecosystem. And it is great to see so many established VCs are already onboard with this platform.

However, I think the challenges would be multi folds vis-a-vis selection of such startups, resource allocation, and curation of them so that they actually use that money to do groundwork at such times. All startups have been honeycombing their businesses as the Next Unicorns of the COVID-19 Era. But the actual story is somewhat different if you do a ground analysis. So the metrics need to be clear on both sides of the table and the fund realization and allocation needs to be true and just as well,” he says.

Opportunity for investors during the financial Tsunami of COVID-19

Dr. Dinesh agrees that the market has definitely taken a huge hit & hence these times offer a perfect buying side for investors as most companies are opening up their previous rounds or raising short term capital at major discounts on valuation. “The negotiation power for Investors becomes strong and so does the curation. Because only strong bottom line companies are able to carry operations somehow at the moment. And we have already seen funding being picked up in the last couple of weeks,” he says.