'Being an online marketplace has helped us in staying connected with our customers and partners'

Anant Raj Kanoria, CEO, iQuippo  

“The spread of the pandemic has been very surprising as things changed pretty quickly and there was hardly any time to plan, but just react. Our first priority has been the health and safety of our employees and all our partners working with us. So when we first learnt of cases in India we started to sanitize our offices and advise our people on how to deal with the pandemic. After some time we introduced our work from home policy and advised our people to maintain social distancing. Also after the nationwide lockdown, we have ensured that all our employees are safe and reached their homes or provide them with appropriate accommodation or logistics.

We have seen that a lot of people are looking at assets online and gathering more information to understand and plan them once the lockdown opens up. Being an online marketplace has helped us in that respect that our presence helps our customers and partners to work online and also register or provides leads online. Through digital marketing we are engaging the client but as the activity is very low and due to logistical challenges in delivering the assets there is no decisions making happening but just engagement. To be honest we are not fully prepared for it as we do not know when the lockdown will get over and when will activity start. But our mantra is that we need to be engaged with our partners and customers during this time and need to reflect and focus on our internal process and strategy to build a more agile and robust organisation.

Being an online marketplace has helped us in staying connected with our customers and partners but the activity levels at the sites have come to a halt, the decision making has stopped, thereby transactions on the website has virtually stopped. This has been a shock to us and the only way to deal with it economically is to look at our processes and make it more efficient.”