How to generate continuous Business Revenue in times of COVID-19

There are two ways to respond to an attack: Flight, or Fight.

As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 outbreak, there are many companies which have resorted to huge lay-offs and other drastic cost-cutting measures in the hopes of surviving.

On the other hand, there are few which have met the challenge head-on and have transformed themselves like a chameleon – not only for survival – but for keeping on generating revenue, and even discovering better ways to do so.

Tangent off to new revenue streams is the business mantra to beat the devil of COVID-19.

Explore variations to your core business – something which is directly or indirectly related to defeat the pandemic. For instance, a company like General Motors has started manufacturing ventilators, which are in great demand.

This is just one example of a big company. Others, much smaller, have also been innovative in diverging to newer businesses.

How V-Mart is responding to the ‘Opportunity’

At V-Mart, we stepped up our kirana business – not just offering a wider variety of food and other essentials, but also taking the initiative of doorstep delivery to millions of our loyal customers. Drawing from one of our core business values of customer centricity, we want to be sure to continue serving our customers in these times when the demand for fashion apparels (which is the hallmark of V-Mart) might not be so high, but the demand for essentials is very much there.

At the same time, we are giving a huge push to our online business by further improving our supply chain and digital platform. The intent is to ensure that our customers can shop for their desired products with the same assurance as to quality and reasonable prices as at our physical stores.

Leveraging Multi-functional Expertise to explore new revenue streams

At V-Mart, we have made it a practice to create special teams of people from different domains. Such teams regularly explore potential business revenue outside our core business. This is done for both short and long term, with each member encouraged to be creative.

Such teams also get time off to focus on their core work. This is so that they do not get exhausted and are able to regroup afresh. This keeps creativity vibrant.

Creating Business Agility

Not just in challenging times such as these, but otherwise too, if you want to keep growing it is best to develop an agile top management team.

Such management team ideally consists of department heads and their topline managers. The intent is not to keep their focus and energy on a single task. Rather, it is to create a balance between creating an ‘agile organization’ along with delivering upon their key parameters.

Delegation comes into actual implementation here, with the leadership letting ‘process / project owners’ taking full responsibility which leads to employee empowerment and creating succession pipelines as well.

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