10 areas that will actually benefit from Corona

The Covid-19 outbreak spells bad news for many industries. Airlines and the travel and tourism industry is probably the biggest casualty. Then there’s the hospitality industry with empty hotels and fine dining restaurants. Daily wage workers, drivers and those running offline stores will also face the brunt of the economic downturn. However, others will benefit...

1. Broadband industry: The broadband usage has shot up. Work From Home (WFH) means that everyone is using their home Internet connection for video conferencing and transferring their files. Expect a serious upgrade to the global broadband infrastructure network because if some industries are in recession, others have to boom to make up.

2. Over-the-top media: It’s so bad that some governments have actually requested Netflix and the like to reduce the resolution of their content to ease the traffic. In office Netflix usage is limited and mobiles consume much lesser bandwidth on the go. With everyone watching on their big screens at home, bandwidth usage is soaring. But it’s not just the bandwidth. OTT will now get a lot of new users who will be hooked for life. Very soon be could have a cable TV like situation with hundreds of “OTT channels”.

3. E-commerce delivery: Everyone is sitting at home. You can’t shop outside. This only means that home deliveries will hit the roof. BigBasket is already struggling to meet peak demand and worldwide Amazon looks like it’s going in for a hiring spree. Newcomers like Dunzo could also see a spike. The restaurant industry is promising touchless deliveries where the delivery guy will put the food boxes in a bag, leave and intimate you. Many have already started wearing gloves and masks.

4. 5G networks: The world has been dragging its feet on the whole 5G business, but not anymore. With the WFH getting a huge boost in 2020, broadband connectivity of the home, not office is sharply under focus. It is only 5G which can offer a seamless mobile broadband across the entire city. Governments will now be forced to put 5G implementation into overdrive.

5. Cloud: Another thing about WFH means that employees can no longer rely on the infrastructure of their offices and almost all the companies of the world will be forced to go in for an all-encompassing cloud network. Data regulation legislation is already in place all over the world, including India, and companies can legally and seamlessly transfer everything to the cloud.

6. Pharmaceutical industry: The medical industry has been found to be severely lagging in handling the Coronavirus load. Expect an upgrade here too. There will be major breakthroughs in testing and infrastructure like mobile CT scanners and ventilators. In the stock of many medical companies is already up and medical startups could get a fillip.

7. WFH industry: Collaboration tools for the same are being downloaded in record numbers and offices will now try them out in novel ways. 3D collaboration tools could also get mainstream. While it will be forced WFH collaboration for maybe 1-2 quarters, a long-term trend and industry dependency will eventually emerge thanks to this. We may have a new WFH industry.

8. No-touch/Remote industry: A new industry could well come out of this and get a new name. Robotics, Robotic Process Automation, drones, driverless cars, AI-ML tools that could replace humans… The technology implications of trying to keep down human contact to a minimum could be huge.

9. Small tech parks/countries: The US is an economic/tech giant and China till recently was the main challenger. But now the world has realized the dangers of putting all eggs in one basket. To offset a giant, many R&D centres and tech parks will come all over the world, which will be a safer bet if we have regular pandemic scares.

10. Innovation industry: History has shown that in times of war and tragedy, a lot of innovations come out. In fact World War II turned scientific progress on its head and led to so many inventions that it will be difficult to list them all here. So expect many more such innovations that have not been imagined in all of the above points.