More than a year into the new normal, and small businesses are still struggling to optimise their digital operations. Engaging online customers, navigating hybrid workplaces, and lack of credit options — are some of the key challenges faced by these businesses. Now, technology start-ups have come up with new innovations to revive small businesses.

A 2021 Dun & Bradstreet survey showed that 82% of small businesses in India were negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Three measures needed to revive small businesses post the pandemic are better credit facility, better marketing support, and adoption of technology, the report added.

Engaging Customers

“In the pre-pandemic world, customers would come to a cosmetics store, and the sales executive would demonstrate the products on their skin or offer trial pieces for customers to experiment. Now all that is gone. So now brands are considering the possibility of getting a model to demo these products for the consumers in a live stream,” said Sunil Nair, CEO of Firework India. This Mumbai-based company has built a platform for e-commerce businesses, advertisers, and publishers to engage users on their website using short-form web stories and live streaming. In a live stream shopping experience, customers are able to ask sales representatives questions about the product, and even demand customisation.

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Firework India claims that 40 percent of people who watch their live streams, add products to their cart and 35 percent of them eventually buy the product in the next seven days. Some of the clients of Firework India include Forest Essentials, Baked by Hosh, Musify, Big Small Shop, The Ayurveda Co, Epigamia, and Purple Panchi.

Hybrid Workplaces

Further, Bengaluru-based MoveInSync has launched a new product called WorkInSync, to help companies optimise hybrid workplaces. Some of its features include managing shifts and schedules for teams, booking desks and meeting rooms, and aligning work preferences of team members, among others.

Deepesh Agarwal, Cofounder and CEO of MoveInSync and WorkInSync said, “In pre-covid times, companies had to keep 500 desks for 500 employees but now with alternate working days or twice-a-week working schedules, they can either bring down the number of desks to 250 or accommodate two times the number of employees at half the real estate cost. Real estate is the second largest expense for companies after salaries.”

The Bengaluru-based company claims to have more than 10 clients, which are majorly from the banking and technology sector .

Access To Credit

In the past few months, the digital lending platform Kissht has customised its line of credit offering to suit the demands of its customers.

The Mumbai-based company has come up with a bullet repayment product that allows users to choose their repayment schedule along with a snooze feature. Up to 48 hours prior to the repayment date, users can press this snooze button and extend the repayment date by 30 days, without having to pay any penalty. However, only three such snooze points are allowed. The ticket size of credit offered by the company ranges from ₹8,000 to around ₹40,000.

As of now, Kissht claims that 65 percent of its overall customer demand is coming from self-employed entities such as mom and pop store owners and gig workers. Kissht claims to have 13 million registered users, out of which 6.5 million have applied for loans and over 3 million are unique borrowers. “This (self-employed) is the segment which is driving our growth in the post-pandemic times. We did about ₹250 crores of business in February 2020, which was the last full month of pre-Covid times, and with our new offerings we surpassed that amount in February 2021,” said Kissht co-founder and CEO, Krishnan Vishwanathan.

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