 We are lying. Great. Hello and welcome, everyone, to the virtual conference on Future of Shared Economy by Entrepreneur India. I'm Preetima Bhardwaj, Project Head Webinars at Entrepreneur India. Today's discussion will revolve around the next big opportunity, trends for shared economy. The agenda to be discussed during the session is shared economy businesses would need to rethink what creates value, what is important right now and in the future, and what role digital innovation can play in making new things happen. Let me start by laying out the ground rules for our attendees. The discussion will go on for 90 minutes. This will be followed by a question and answer session for the next 20 minutes. If you have any questions during the course of the discussion, you can post them through the Q&A option at the bottom of your screen. Mention in your question if it is directed at any specific panelist. We will take up questions post the panel discussion. Please participate in poll during the webinar. We would also like to request the attendees to keep the question within the scope of discussion here today and not pitch their businesses. Let me now introduce our session moderator, Ms. Ritu Maria, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur India and Asia Pacific. Our first session for the day would be for about 45 minutes and it'll talk about co-working, co-living and hospitality. Our panelists today are Dharamveer Singh Chauhan, co-founders and CEO Zostel, Nitish Tarda, founder of SmartWorks. Suresh Rangarajan, founder and CEO, Kolev. Ankita Seth, co-founder and head of acquisitions and HR, Vista Rooms. I will now request Mr. Tumare to start the session. Over to you, Ms. Maria. Thank you, Pritama. And a very good morning to everybody. Thank you to all for all our participants who joined us here today morning as we talk about the opportunity and adversity which is in the shared economy and particularly today we have taken upon various opportunities that exist in shared economy today. But before I talk about opportunities, you know, there is a certain trend that has globally become a norm which is that of a circular economy which means that no more the economy is going to look very linear, you know, wherein people buy, they use and they dispose. So everything is going to be reused, recycled and therefore there would be less wastage and more better use of the resources that we have so that more people can use it as while they being abundant but also reusable and shared. So today, that is one of the reasons why we have kept together this meet for shared economy and we see that there are a multitude of opportunities within shared economy that exist today. So the first one we, of course, we're touching is on real estate and spaces. Now, whether they are hostels, whether they are co-living spaces, whether they are co-working spaces, whether they are hotels, everything is going to look very different in terms of its business model and usage going forward. Now, understandably with of course social distancing being the norm today, it's people are today a bit scared and people are today a bit wary of not wanting to use or be in the same space where others are. But I think that's only a short-term phenomena as long as this virus will last and will continue to scare us. But once it is over, that is how the sustainability is going to become a very, very important issue as is going to be how hygienically clean the environments we are there, where we go. Going forward, my prediction is that co-living co-working spaces and luxury villas or hostels is going to be the norm. And right now in the last few years, what we have seen is the coming of or the building up of these places where in co-working never used to exist till about five years ago. And today it's a big area to be in. Co-living never used to be, we used to go to landlords and used to probably sometimes take ding dingy spaces and rent them. That is not going to be a norm anymore. We're going to look for good, clean hygienic spaces and value-added services by the co-living players, co-working players is also going to be a big norm that we will see in the times to come. You know, I always give an example that there was a time when brands are built and there is a time when opportunities are created. Now, this is the time post COVID where we'll see more opportunities being created in co-living and co-working, but also at the same time, big brands being built on their value systems. Their value systems could be more hygienic spaces that they are providing. It could be more value-added services that they're giving to the customers. It is about being able to go last mile for their customer in order to make sure that the customer feels safe and secure in an environment that he's going. Understandably, the opportunity itself is going to be very large because as everybody, all businesses post COVID will be downsizing. They will look for smaller spaces, smaller offices, and a lot of them might want to shift into a co-working kind of arrangement instead of actually renting and owning their own offices. And on the other side, when it comes to co-living, we will find that there will be a big opportunity that will emerge because today, companies would want to tie up with co-living spaces in order for it to make sure that the workforce that is going to live on rent is able to live in a more cleaner, better facility as compared to some other rental facilities that they live in. Because it's not only vital that they have their employees living in good, clean working environments. It's also about when they come together, they have to be more cleaner, better environments that all of them can work in. So going forward, shared economy is going to be the way of life. And not just in real estate, but it will also be in mobility. It will also be in consumer goods that we use. Everything is going to be in part of a circular economy where things will be reused and recycled. So today I'm going to head this very interesting panel and I have some amazing panelists over here who are going to tell us about what are the future opportunities that today exist in shared economy in the spaces, which is real estate. So let me start with you, Nitesh. Nitesh heads smart works as the founder and co-living has been a norm, co-working, I'm afraid has been a norm that has now come into existence and is being largely referred to as the future of work. So Nitesh, I understand the short term, obviously nobody is using these facilities, but in the long term, what do you see is the future of co-working and how do you see this model changing from currently the way it has been to make it more safer, more sanitized, more consistent for the customer in the times to come? First of all, thank you, Ritu. Thank you so much for having me here. I think one of the few things that are going to change significantly in co-working now is, as a trend in India, what was happening for most of the enterprises and that's the side that we cater to is that a lot of them are looking at consolidation. When we were talking to most of our clients, they were talking about consolidating two to three different locations of theirs and coming up with a thousand or a 2,000 seater in one location and having their head to the other side of there. But I think that has significantly changed the conversation that we've started having lately is more about how can we create multiple offices across different parts of the cities, basically for two things. One is so that their employees don't have to travel much. You have offices for most of these companies very close to where people live. And the second thing is that there is a business continuity plan whenever something like this happens, we have to realize that social distancing is gonna be a way of life. All co-working players are gonna essentially focus on making sure that the spaces and the services required for social distancing are in place before most of our enterprise clients move in. I think how we're gonna look at the space is gonna be slightly different. Earlier the conversation used to be how dense can we make the co-working spaces, can we fit in once the eight and 65 to 70 square foot? I think now the conversation is gonna go back and say that all right, we want certain norms of social distancing to be followed. And can we go back to the 80 to 100 square foot per person and sort of densify moving for offices? Having said that, I think the second trend that people are talking about is work from home. I don't think that it's gonna be a big sort of thing in India because we don't have the infrastructure present. So I'm pretty sure people are still gonna opt out for co-working as an option because you don't want to really spend on the infrastructure. I think it's a good great opportunity for us. Having said that, there are a bunch of norms that we have to really put in place in our spaces for it to be usable by our clients. Hi, this is Saurav. So it is just one offline. So I'll just take over for the moment. So if I can come to reach to you, what's your thought? How this space is going to pan out in the new future given that social distancing is the norm nowadays? Yeah, I think we touched upon this in our conversation earlier before we started the session. I think it's very important. Suddenly people are looking at children and hygienic and people are willing to live in whatever kind of places because residence was not something that was a top of the mind priority. Because they were all looking at hostels and paying guests accommodation as a stopgap arrangement. But now, given whatever has happened in the economy over the last couple of months, people have started, the trending word is teen and state and hygienic residences which was never there before. So I think that is a big involvement in terms of a customer and in terms of a tenant's mind. From the other point is also about safety because in terms of, in case there are any challenges that people face, these are all usually used by migrants, people who don't belong to the same city. So what happens when you are in a strange city and who's the person who's going to take care of you? Who's your ice in case of an emergency anchor in that city, that becomes very important because we have never come across situations where borders are sealed, districts are sealed, zones are sealed. So who's your friend? Who's your homie? Who's your neighborhood friend? That has suddenly become a very, very important thing. So you would don't want to be living on your own. You would much rather live with a brand which will take care of you and which will also service you in case of these kind of emergencies. So this is from a tenant point of view and I think from a corporate point of view, they were always wanting to stay at an arms length from a tenant or from an employee staying perspective. But at this point in time, I see that changing because co-living will automatically become a business continuity plan for many corporates, especially in the ITPP sector which means that they will be very, very interested to figure out where these guys are staying and what kind of infrastructure is available, whether internet is available, whether food is available for them to continue living in such a lockdown situation, so on and so forth. So I think that is an evolving thing and that I think people were only interested in dropping them off in whatever be the facility but that will change. People will be very interested, corporates will be very interested as to what kind of facilities they live in whether that has adequate infrastructure overall serving to the needs of the corporate in case of an emergency, something that will evolve. One last point that I would like to make is also in general people's confidence level has shaken up. So something that everybody will look at is flexibility, whether it's in the co-working space or co-living spaces, whether it's a corporate tenant or a retail tenant, everybody is starting to look at flexibility as a very important criteria, which means that you don't want to get into a 11 month contract with a landowner from whom deposit recovery will become a challenge. So everything will evolve based on that, people for the next six, 12, 18 months are going to be a little, little worried and look at flexibility and pay a premium for flexibility is something that that will also evolve. So you see this as an opportunity of more collaboration coming in with your kind of model with companies for most things. Yeah, one is a collaboration. I think this market, see co-working, I think was an innovation, but co-living, in fact, co-living came after co-working, but I think it's not an innovation. Unfortunately, I'm saying this despite, you know, running a brand in co-living. That's primarily because, you know, for several centuries, people living together, people of same taste and likes and dislikes living together has been a phenomena, right? Migrant labor camps have been a phenomena. Soldiers living together in trenches have been a phenomena. So this is not an extreme innovation, but what will happen is from an unorganized, it will become organized. That is the evolution that is going to happen. You will see more brands evolving because housing was always an ego. I live in golf, golf share, I live in prestige apartments, I live in parameters, you know, these are the kind of statements people make. So that has to fizzle down and start moving into co-living spaces as well. So the pride of living will start coming in and people will start moving away from, you know, unorganized to an organized player. That's the evolution that we have. So I'll come to Dharamjeet and then to Ankita. So for co-living, it's a little different where you have a little permanency in terms of people who are living, but in say Zostel Dharamjeet, so, you know, the churn is much higher. So how do you keep that check and balance in terms of, you know, safety and because there'll be a lot of people who will be coming in and now with, you know, even for us, our symptomatic people showing science, we don't know where we are heading. So what would be the plan for you? Right. So I think the first plan is to, let's see when the things start getting normal. When do people start getting outside their homes? All right. And Ben, when you, as I mentioned a bit earlier as well, that the travel is an outcome of a safe and healthy society in which people love to go and explore outside and see. So I think, you know, there's this larger trend that might mix up, you know, because Zostel always provides very high quality infrastructure when it comes to internet or whether you want to just stay there for a couple of weeks and work. And it might not just be your office work, there are people who are artists, several different passions in the economy itself. So, where I see, you know, us going forward is that towards those people who wish to take a longer break as well, whether it is two weeks, whether it is three weeks, whether it is a small group of start up, you know, four or five people who want to work, let's say from a secluded place. Since we have these 50 locations all across India. So that is something that, you know, obviously, you know, we are looking at and really exploring. Then, you know, as things open up, there is going to be that social distancing norm. There is going to be a heavy sanitizing effect. There is going to be a mandate mass inside these spaces. You know, and I think that goes across, you know, whether you are running a hotel or whether you are running a backpacker's hostel. So, you know, I think, you know, those are the, as, as, you know, Nitish also mentioned, Suresh also mentioned, I think the product itself, you know, the product itself that we guys are building has to evolve, you know, and then there will be a demand out of it. You want to travel, can you provide me end-to-end safety that, you know, that picks me up from home? It is definitely, you know, COVID-free, wherever I go, it's all taken care of. Do I have friends in that spaces wherever I'm going? Is there somebody who I can also, you know, relate on an inclusive level, not just on a brand level. I think the brands are also, you know, changing their positions as we come to the millennials and then GenC, brands today are much more honest. Brands today are much more, you know, approachable, friendly, you know, for the, for that matter, rather than, you know, just somebody who is the, just let's say a tappa or someplace, you know, who's running ads in the television. For the matter, we haven't run a single ad, you know, but there's a word of mouth. That's how, you know, the community is right now perceiving the brands. So I think there is a product evolution that we are going to do. And then let's see how the demand and how soon or how in what phase the demand comes, what kind of demand usually comes. So we have to be on our toes. I think it's a fast-changing landscape right now, but from that standpoint, I think the standard procedures of, you know, social distancing, sanitizing, mask mandatory, those things might be, you know, common all across, you know, be it co-working or co-living or even in the hospital spaces. Ankit, I'm coming to you. So for hospitality, first of all, travel needs to start and then comes, you know, staying. So the path seems even longer. But then, how do you see, what are the changes that are required from business point of view to ensure that people visit VISTA rooms? So see for us, earlier it was always a location which was a USP to bring in customers because they would have beautiful views, nice homes, lovely locations. But today with the new normal that we all talk about, it's going to be hygiene service, definitely. But hygiene is something which everybody is going to differentiate with. And this assurance of hygiene is something that we all need to work on. So for us, in terms of plans, definitely beautiful locations, very, very exciting for a customer to come in, but without the assurance of hygiene, it may not work at all. So for that, our steps are in terms of, you know, how do you communicate to your customer? How do you actually do it at the properties? So we're building all around that, where these aspects of, you know, all hygiene aspects that one needs to cater to is something most critical for us. And how do you make it, as we discussed, you know, brands are being more honest on who stayed, what happened, what were the temperatures, how are our caregivers managing? These are factors that we're building in, in our current period where it's more of building the new way of operating. I think that's something that will make a difference to us. And the other part is privacy, which we feel maybe another USP for, you know, most of these spaces is something that we're already working on, that how you make it, let's say for example, it is important that there is a certain time kept. So only alternate days are available or you move to long stays. So these are different things that we as a brand have been working on and are categorizing our units in that form, managing our workforce also on those lines that they are trained. A lot of virtual training programs is something that in this period we are working on. At the same time, the moment things open up, there would be certain other trainings that will work out. And then there are specifications that are available today, with which we're also going to tie up. So that consumer assurance and actual assurance of the properties, that is the new way that we're changing ourselves of how we were operating on. I'm sure, I don't know how difficult will that be to assure consumers till the time, you know, it's declared that we have COVID. But I'll come to you, Nithish. So in terms of, you know, in terms of co-working spaces, I've seen some reports that there have been many cancellations and, you know, people have been, the advance bookings have been coming down. So I'm sure that there needs to be changes in the dimensions of how a co-working space works from now on. So does it mean that your spaces will, the efficiency of the spaces in terms of the number of cubicles that you were able to give would come down and will that affect the revenue as such? So I think in the past couple of months, yes, people have been revisiting the fact that how densified is their current office setups and how can they de-densify it. I think the norms will change. It will become from a 65 square foot sort of norm and it'll go up to about 85 to 90 at least. There's definitely going to be an impact on a perceived cost. I think when you look at a co-working, the margins of co-working players, over the next couple of quarters, yes, we see a significant, we see maybe not a significant hit, but we will definitely take a hit on our margins per seat. Having said that, I think, you know, economically, this is the time where we see this as an opportunity more than anything else. Because, you know, in the last couple of weeks, the number of inquiries that have come for co-working space to us have spiked up by almost 60%. Even though we're on a close down and we understand decisions aren't being made right now, but the number of inquiries for people who want to take up space, you know, post this being lifted has already gone up by 60%. On a day-to-day average, we're getting more than 100 to 120 inquiries, which is a significant jump of what we were getting earlier. So there's definitely interest in the space. Yes, margins will go down for a couple of quarters because people would want to be careful till the time the social distancing norms are in place, which might be a reality for the next two, three quarters. But having said that, you are making your margins from the number of inquiries that are going to come in, which hopefully once we start off, are going to get converted. Specifically for us, we are very, very enterprise focused. So 95% plus of our clients are enterprises. And these enterprises are looking at business continuity also as a solution that they require, right? So some of the conversations we're having with our clients is, can I get 30 seats in all your 32 centers across India? Because we want to give our employees the flexibility of working out of wherever they can. So I think that is the other trend that will come up, which will help us sort of maintain those margins. So, Kodi, coming. Sorry, I'll take over. Thank you very much. So I'll take over from here. Sorry very much for dropping out in the earlier conversation. So, you know, as sort of was just pointing out that, and I think Nitish sort of said that about 30 to 30% of the queries have started coming from enterprises. Suresh, my question to you is, is this a trend that you are also going to see coming in terms of enterprises now taking over major chunk of your customer base instead of individuals? Yeah, predominantly co-living as an industry has been a bill to consumer, bill to tenant directly. It was very, very small percentage which was actually bill to company directly. So we as an example had less than 10% which was bill to company. But I see that trend changing though it will take a lot of time, six to 12 months before it actually settles down and people start adopting this. But we have started a lot of inquiries at this point in time, more flirtatious in nature at this point in time where customers, corporate customers are looking at us and asking if we can offer them beds plus seats in their property, in our properties as more as a business continuity plan. In fact, we had a couple of clients who wanted 1800 beds and seats together in three locations, Hyderabad, Pune and Bangalore. But those kind of vacant inventory is not available with us so we could not service those customers. But that's what is the evolution that will happen out of this. As I mentioned earlier, they were least bothered as to where their employees were living but now they'll be very, very concerned to make sure that the infrastructure is in place not only in the workplace but also in the living spaces. Sure, but do you see this as an opportunity? I mean, do you think you can now quickly turn around in order to meet this demand that is coming from the market? Do you feel that you could tie up with a lot of other such co-living spaces and be able to meet this kind of corporate demand that is coming? Yeah, so unfortunately, what happens is, this has to be long-term contracts with the corporates. It cannot be short-term in nature. So like the 1800 bed inquiry that we talked about was a three month only during lockdown. So corporates need to settle down and figure out that, if their employees live closer to their IT path, it is actually going to be a saving in terms of transportation and of course, time saving as well. So we need to have far more detailed conversations with these corporates but I definitely see this as an opportunity. In the Western world, whether it is Google, Facebook or Salesforce, all of them are creating integrated campuses in the Bay Area. So you will not see this beyond the next couple of years where many of our corporates will also start looking at an integrated campus which means that at least in the same micro market. If you're operating a large facility in the run out of the group or Karadi, you will want your employees to stay in the same micro market and prefer to walk to work because today, taking public transportation also is going to come under a little bit of threat over the next few days based on the social distancing norms. I think she's gone off again. So yeah, of course, I mean, this will have to be, we'll have to see how it goes from here. So that'll be, how about you? So in terms of the flow of customers that will come to you and do you see this? I mean, will it change in terms of how people were in terms of units that you were having? So will it also mean that you will also have to give more space and which will mean that your revenues will come down? How do you see it? How are you planning it? Yeah, so I'll answer that and I'll also continue on our larger discussion of the panel. As Suresh rightly said, we have to, I think we have to really look at it from a, as an infrastructure perspective, we don't have a lot of large buildings that have been made with the mindset of people living in small private spaces. Small private spaces is fundamentally different than let's say what the real estate builders have, largely built. We all talk about the crash that's happening in the market right now, but we must remember it all began with the real estate prices, the larger real estate inflated market that was already there in the market. And I think when the larger trend is now towards, there were higher prices that were bought, but the rental yields weren't there. For a lot of these properties, the rental yields were very less. In India, a lot of rental rates are close to 1 to 2%. So to really build a high quality infrastructure that can even generate 4 to 6% yield, a certain shock that has really now come into the market right now is a great time. A lot of people come to us and say that, these let's say 500 hostel room that we had made can be worked out with you guys. And I really look at those properties, but those are already half made. They already have those, a kitchen inside every 3BHK. So if you've already designed a building with let's say 4, 3BHKs and now you want to convert it into a co-living, it's fundamentally very different. You don't come up with that high quality product that can be there. When you look at those 200 square feet rooms, shinking to 120 square feet, the way it used to be, let's say in the top tier colleges in India or across in our IIT and we had those small rooms with us that were private. I think when you look at co-living market and when you mix it up with the larger lifestyle of a circular economy, let's say, let's say we have a lot of volunteers, a lot of property managers who actually, although property managers get paid, but a lot of volunteers are unpaid. The only thing that they get is a bed to sleep, a great hospitality, people to serve, people to meet and food to eat. If companies come up with that perspective that we need such an infrastructure in which people can live, they can have fast internet, they can have a fast work. So then it automatically transforms into, because we are those who, all of the people who are talking about right now, our expertise lies in creating these spaces and there are in the ecosystem, there is from government to, corporates with these developers who create these infrastructure spaces, everybody has to understand where the world is moving forward. You cannot just request 2,000 seats or 2,000 beds for two months and then move out. There has to be a fundamental shift and a long-term approach towards where we are heading towards. It has to be in half a decade or let's say a decade long perspective from here where I see very large co-living buildings, rather than just having a prestige or a workforce road, where are those buildings that are much more millennium friendly that really do not are placing bands on, families are only allowed in this society. That's not how I see the world moving forward. And when I look at Zostel and the spaces that we are creating all across India, so we have gone to very remote places, from the highest in India to the first village from Spiti to in Kerala and everywhere. And what we have created over there is for people to come to stay, to work and a very proudly say to work because what we have also realized, and although we come from a real estate perspective and we all want things to go back to normal, people rushing to offices, people rushing to away from their home, but the stark reality is there are a lot of new job opportunities that are going to be created that are going to be work from home. There are going to be the new norm might be that we might take half the co-working seats that we had because half the time people might just be working from home. So these are the realities and then automatically it transforms. So I think a very good internet and a very good clean and hygienic infrastructure might just be the bare essentials to really kick off real estate in places that wasn't anywhere. The real estate prices have very secluded to let's say being city centers and even inside India, just the Gurgaon or the Bombay Bandar region or the Bangalore that have been seeing even sharp peak where the larger real estate market in India has been in the downfall. I think this is a great time for really great spaces to be created across here to cities beyond location. Rating a place that this is the price per square feet only because of location has to fundamentally change. We have to look at the infrastructure that the place has and that infrastructure demands a premium. It's as simple as that. And beyond that infrastructure is the service layer. If your service layer is once again of a very high quality, you will demand higher yield. So I think the market itself will put pressure on a lot of these things, but let's see how it turns around. Okay, Anthita, your final thoughts before we move on to question and answer. We have a lot of questions and answers that have not been answered yet. So in terms of opportunity, in our space because it is private homes. So it automatically takes care of social distancing. Only the known group is there. Definitely we see a good opportunity there. Otherwise it will shift, as I said, location to hygiene, service to again hygiene. This is something that one needs to look at and that is what creates the way for them. Okay, thank you so much. So we have some interesting questions that we have lined up. So the first question I think we're gonna pick is Ashutosh. Can we have for him, can we have his audio, please? Hello everyone. Hi Ashutosh. My question is for Mr. Nitesh Sharda. Basically I have three questions. The first of the question is that how do you see the future of large-sized spaces versus the optimum size with more number of offices across different locations in the city for our co-working industry? I think to answer that, there is everyone has their own strategy when it comes to co-working. We as a strategy do much larger setups. We don't do 20, 30, 40,000 square foot offices. Typical size, we do only individual buildings and typical size of our buildings are anywhere between 200 to 300,000 square foot. In fact some of our other properties are about 800,000 square foot. So we do much larger setups. Having said that, we also design our offices as private offices for our enterprises. So essentially inside the office, it's completely custom made for our clients. So that's why we can de-densify or densify it as much as the client's preference. The trend that we are seeing for our clients is, to my point which I said earlier, is that people are now de-densifying their existing setups and they're saying that instead of having one consolidated setup, we want multiple offices spread across different regions. So if someone was looking at 1,000 seats in one location, now they're looking at 300 seats spread across three to four locations. That's just how the trend is changing. So while the sizes of our facilities are pretty much gonna be the way we've been targeting, but I think the client spaces are gonna get sort of smaller but then they're gonna spread across geographies to multiple locations. So in terms of total number of seats, I think they'll definitely be a spike but it'll be spread across multiple locations. Does that answer your question? Yes, I'm sure Nitesh, thank you so much. Next question that we have is from Abdul. Can we have the audio of Abdul, please? Okay, I think we've lost Abdul. So next question is from Anu Chipper. Can we have her audio, please? Okay, the next question I think is from Ishank Ahuja. Can we have Ishank, please? I'm there, I had asked two questions but I've already received the answers on the panel, but I'll go ahead and ask them. This was for Ankita and Dharambi. So do you think travellers will prefer to be secluded places to travel rather than popular crowded cities or health stations? And Dharambi has already answered that. Maybe we can hear it from Ankita, that is possible. Ishank, we definitely see that as a changing trend where people want to going in line with this whole distancing and not really confident on who was there and so on. Definitely people want more private spaces, more secluded spaces with people who are known to them and the whole place to themselves. That is the trend we definitely see coming in. All right, and the second question was, do you think people would be willing to pay more to meet a more private and safe space than what they used to earlier? This will also hold true for co-working, co-living and also Ankita and Dharambi. Yeah, so I think safety will trump all. As I said, you asked over there as well. I think when we travel, when do things get popular? In fact, originally everything is unexplored. I come from that mindset that India has Europe's whole potential, but it is all unexplored. We need infrastructure. We need the infrastructure people will travel. It's as simple as that. And when things get popular, then they get crowded. So I think it's a very nice time that places are healing which were overcrowded. And definitely, I see clearly a security premium. Either people will not travel. There might be two categories of people. Firstly, there will be deal hunters who will think that now that things are opening up, the flights are cheap. Even a recent friend of mine went to South Africa and he was staying alone in a five-star hotel at a very affordable rate. So all I'm saying is there might be some deal hunters that might come up first as the lockdown opens up. But the normal traveler will be very willing to pay 100 bucks extra. So at Zostal, if you compare Zostal to any other backpacker's hostel chain, all of those rate parity, et cetera, what people do, we never do that. We have always priced ourselves at, let's say 500 bucks or something above it usually. And it's always stand for hygienic, secure, very convenient location. So I think that just, we might have to invest more in sanitizers, in masks, et cetera, for everybody. So we will have to push it back towards the consumers as well. And hopefully, the larger thing is that we have got what the consumers want. I think the consumers themselves will want to spend 50 bucks more and be that safe, secure, not just for themselves, but as we get into a lot of young travelers over here, they need to give safety and assurance to their family members also. So I think, from my side, I think, you know, definitely security and safety will be a bit more key. Thank you. We can take one more question. I think Surya, she would want to answer this question from Shaila. She said, as people will now prefer to travel less and avoid public transport, how can one look at an opportunity for combination of co-living and co-working spaces? Yeah. I think this is something very interesting that is going to evolve. Co-working spaces, including, you know, common co-working spaces within the co-living spaces could become a trend. Giving them desks within their bedroom spaces could be the other one, which will evolve in terms of the designs that we come up with. But most importantly, I think there'll be a, hopefully there'll be a lot of cut down in terms of zigzag travel that this, all the urban cities are seeing. People would prefer to stay closer to workplaces than ever before. They would want to, you know, probably, hopefully start walking to work because the perception is going to be that, you know, public transportation is going to be unsafe, at least for the near future. I hope they don't start. And also, you know, people are scared to get into a Uber and a Ola and, you know, sharing a ride on a bike with others. So with all these norms coming in and becoming a way of life, living closer to workplaces will become very, very attractive. So one of the questions was also to see whether temporarily there'll be a rise in prices of the real estate, especially housing real estate around IT parks. I think yes, you know, so people who have inventory, which is whether it is co-living inventory or residential inventory, in and around office spaces in IT hubs, will start commanding a premium when they offer flexibility. Okay, okay. This one last question for Nitesh and very quickly if you can. So we have a question saying considering slowdown and industry is looking at consolidation, are you still looking at acquisitions and expansion plans? Absolutely. I think, you know, at this point of the year when we started off the year, we were at about two and a half million square foot. We were looking at expanding to about five million square foot. Obviously there's a slight correction to what we were looking at. I think by the end of this year, we'll still be at five million. We're already 4.2 million square foot. Having said that, the inorganic growth is the other opportunity that we think that is there for us in the market. There are a couple of players that we're already evaluating in terms of acquisitions. I think that is gonna be a significant portion of growth for some of the co-working players because there are over 400 co-working players in India today and consolidation is gonna be the way forward because like-minded players will come together and since at this point of time, you really need to sort of hold on to your cash flows and make sure you're in the green, which we are for the past two years. Growing inorganically might make sense. So acquisition is something that we're actively looking at. Okay. There is one more question, which I think maybe the Rangir and Suresh will answer. What is the ideal distance of staying at a co-living space must exist from a tech park? As I said, you know, for these are youngsters, people who typically use these books, I mean, living spaces are between the age group of 22 to 32. So a couple of kilometers is still good. So, you know, two kilometers, which is probably a 15 minute walk is something that people will still prefer. But the closer they are from one of the gates, the better it is. So I think that will become the trend. And again, you know, paying guest accommodations which are unorganized will see a lot of fallout and become organized because you know, we also have a rental housing association now where we are specifying certain norms as to how we maintain these properties to ensure that you follow all the protocols in terms of cleaning and hygiene and garbage disposal. So these are being mandated by the local authorities and that will become very, very essential. So ideally two kilometers is the radius, I would say, from any of the IT park gates. So we've really run out of time for the next session. We have people who are waiting for the next session. So thank you so much everyone. It was great to hear from everyone. What I understand is that when we are very challenging times, there are definitely opportunities that have come up. And together I'm sure that we shall, you know, this time shall also pass and then we'll have everything back on track. So thank you very much everyone. The next session, can I give it back to Mr. Murphi? Thanks all of the times, Nidu. Thank you so much. Thank you. I think it was a nice discussion. Thank you panelists. I think it was a fantastic session. Moving on to our next session, which is on the mobility space. This session is for about 35 minutes followed by question and answers for 10 minutes. Our panelists for this session are Mr. Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO Yulu, Mr. Rajiv Suri, Managing Partner Oris Venture Capital, Lakshana Jha, CEO and Co-Founder S. Wright, Akash Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO Zip. Moderator for this session is Saurabh Kumar, Editor Special Projects Entrepreneur India. I see all our panelists have joined. So over to you Saurabh. Thank you so much, Pritima. Hello and welcome to the second section of today's webinar on the future of shared economy. In this session, we will look at possibly one of the most critical aspects of shared economy and that is mobility. Where shared mobility is one of the most pronounced disruptions to have happened and it shook the entire concept of vehicle ownership because of its keys. According to a study, the fleet strength shared mobility market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 9.7% between 2019 and 2025 in India. Mind you, this is on top of almost 50% growth in fleet strength in 2018 compared with a year ago period. Also, the revenue was expected to be around 14% CAGR up to 2025. But with the outbreak of COVID-19, these services have come to a screeching halt and the road ahead looks a little unpredictable right now. So today we will look at how this space is going to pan out in the future with the help of our esteemed panelists today who are all stakeholders in the shared mobility space. Thank you so much everyone for joining us today. So let us start with a very crucial question. Shared and social distance. These are two poles apart. So what does it entail for mobility? So Lakshana, if I can start with you please. You'll have to unmute. Thanks Aurob, thanks for having us here. Really appreciate. So yes, you rightly said that post COVID social distancing is going to be a new phenomena. People are going to be very aware of it. Now having said that people also have to commute, right? Businesses are badly impacted, economies badly impacted. And for that to get better, people will have to start getting to work. Now a large percentage of people use public transportation and cabs and taxis. That's almost around 50% plus. So considering that at this point, you also said that people are very scared to travel. Having said that people are more comfortable traveling with the people that they know. They are not comfortable traveling with strangers in public transportation or in cabs because we don't know who sat in those a little bit at a time, right? So having said that, so having said that people are more, and that's where carpooling would play a big role most COVID. So people are comfortable in carpooling, 70% of our carpools are done with people who travel repetitively with the same groups. So people are comfortable traveling with people from their society, people from their organization. So at this point of time, people are very aware of what is happening in my society, what is happening in the next society, and there are no positive or positive cases, right? So people are very comfortable traveling with people from the same society, people from the same company. Even in the last four, five weeks, we have seen that our co-riders have been touched with each other because they become friends, right? When they start traveling with each other, keeping in touch, making sure that their friends on the platform are doing well. So post COVID, we think that people will travel in smaller groups with people that they know, the network that they trust versus traveling in public transportation and cabs, where they have to travel with strangers or they do not know who sat in the cabs or cars before them. Okay, okay. Thank you, thank you, Laxna. So Amit, I'll come to you. So Laxna said that people are comfortable traveling with people whom they know rather than unknown people. So in your kind of model, where the product itself can be shared with a lot of people. So how do you see their reaction people in using those things? Sure, thanks all once again. I think there's a spectrum, there's no one good answer. Having our own vehicle is probably the safest mode because you're not worried about being infected by anyone. But as all of us know that, that's not a luxury as a country we have. So two things, first of all, economic reason people cannot afford on their own. Even two wheeler penetration in India is around 20%. 80% of our country does not have any vehicle whatsoever. Second thing, even if we basically are rich, we can afford a vehicle. Our road space does not basically is good for that. Whatever we have cut it, we have to rely on shared mobility or mobility as a service. Now each one of us will be making adjustments, the way we have been. So if I'm a consumer, I will be worried about going in a group. So that's why worldwide public transportation has taken a hit already. And wherever the cities where they are reviving back, they are basically now putting structures around that, okay, 50% of the seats will be used, there will be space, et cetera. And then as far as Yulu is concerned, we are a single passenger vehicle. So we are not worried about social distancing. In fact, we probably are the safest mode out there. If someone really has to use a medium which is not theirs, we probably are the safest model out there. Other good advantage with our vehicle is because we use electric mobility and we have a high frequency of vehicle being swapped for battery. So what we have done, we have added a new process where our vehicles are being disinfected. So now on our app, we are showing that when was the last time this vehicle was disinfected. To an extent that if it is more than 24 hours, you cannot open the vehicle. So we are taking extreme measures. One more good part about our business model is, we are using below 25 kilometer per hour speed vehicle, which means that we don't need to have helmets. And I think helmet will be a big problem in post COVID. So there's no second person, there's no shared helmet. And then on top of it, we are basically making sure the vehicles are being disinfected along with the customer's equation. So in a spectrum, we think that anything which is kind of mobility as a service, services like ours will be the best one out there. Okay, okay. Akash, your views on that. Hi, so hello everyone. Thanks for having me here. So one of the things that I feel for shared mobility which could impact at least in the short term is that we've been the first and last mile providers. And what we need to realize is that the metro usage and the bus usage could reduce a little. And then last mile, the solution that we designed for shared mobility for two, three kilometers might have a limited impact till the time those services are not back in full action like a Delhi metro or a bus service in Bangalore or in the bath, right? So those are the things that we need to be watchful of. At the same time, one of the key things that might happen being shared mobility versus a bike taxi or a pooled cab is that here at least, you're riding the vehicle on your own and even by ensuring that the company's disinfecting those vehicles and you also take your precautions by applying masks and gloves. I think this could be a shift that a lot of people might want to keep the vehicle with them for a longer duration rather than just take it for 15 minutes or a 30 minute ride, which is why we focused quite a lot on the long rental plans, which could be a day or a week or a month or a quarter. So you keep the vehicle because people will not be looking at buying a lot of these vehicles immediately, but they might want to still have a vehicle with them for their personal mobility needs going to office from their homes. And that's a limited shift that I see us doing along with the sanitization, which is one of the most important things right now. But one thing that I have seen in other geographies like China, which has opened up, there the usage of this shared cycles, which has been the biggest thing in China has again picked up quite a lot. In fact, that's the only medium along with personal cars, which has grown almost like a 20, 30%. So I think it's there, but all of us need to take the key precautions that we are. Rajiv, I'll come to you from, your lens would be completely different from the other three here. So on one hand, it is very scary. You know, it might sound scary that you will have to share space with someone so, but on the other hand, with layoffs of the cuts and uncertainty when people, they want to buy private vehicles a lot, as just said that they may not be able to buy them. So now comparatively shared mobility is still better than public transport, I would believe when it comes to social distancing. So as an investor, how do you analyze the situation? How do you see it? And how do you see investors reacting to this when it comes to putting in money to the space? You have to unmute it. One always does this, doesn't one? You know, this muting and muting is a part of our lives now. Thank you for the chat and the conversation, very timely topic. I think, you know, obviously there's a lot of uncertainty at this point in time around in terms of what this Corona thing actually is. Obviously the short-term impacts are very clearly fed by everybody, but the medium to long-term is still a little bit more uncertain in part because we don't know enough about what's happening despite all the information overload that we are getting right now. And in part we don't know how the behavior change will be. See, we are working in a recursive system right now where the, I'm sure you remember earlier, physics, where the act of observation changes the observed, right? So the act of absorbing more and more information about COVID and other things also changes the behavior in the consumer. And that consumer behavior change has to be something that you have to respond to and that's an ever-moving target, right? So that I think is a big challenge that we face at the moment. Now, with that uncertainty in mind, I think there are three or four categories that would sort of split the actions or reactions into it, right? The first category is basically around, you know, the loss of revenue and the additional costs that go wrong with it, right? So obviously that, how this is going to pan out is it's going to be a lesser number of people that are going to be taking it for whatever reasons and one part of it is that in terms of revenue loss and the second part of it is around the costs of that revenue loss, right? More fumigation, more services, more protection for drivers and so on and so forth. So that's one part of it, right? The second one I would say is behavior change that's coming out of COVID, right? So if you think about India being, you know, cash on delivery ecosystem per se, right? Would this sort of translate to more wallets being used because I really don't want to handle a cash or the driver doesn't want to take the cash, right? So could that mean behavior change? Public transport buses now in most Western world are not accepting payments in debuts, you know? And they're not allowing people to board from the front also they are asking them to board from the back, right? So that's the second category where there is change coming about in behavior. That's the second one, right? And the third one and this perhaps is the most important thing is what are the human impact of such things, right? You now have, as I was saying earlier, you know something like six, seven lakh drivers and eight, nine lag drivers in the Ola-Oba ecosystem and then you've got a lot of people that are out there in the market, all of whom belong to the so-called gig economy. The good part of the gig economy is that the PNLs don't have to take the liability of those people, but by the way part is they are left out in the lurch, right? So what does that mean to them? You know, how will they cope with the dramatic loss of their fortunes in the recent past? And how will things stand out for them? For instance, some of our startups have taken a little bit. So there's a lot of this human element that we are still yet to figure out and to my mind, that's an equal and a more valid part of how the story will pan out. How will those people that have affected the most and that do not have the kind of cushioning resources that we folks have, how are they going to take it? To my mind, these are the three components that I would sort of split the reaction into. So in terms of business continuity, do you think it will be more difficult for the asset heavy players because they have tech to deter and that the business comes to zero compared with mobility players who have assets or who are asset light or they're more than asset low? So I mean, I think this is, as I was telling you, we are living in a recurrent new input that's changing the behavior of the, you know, there's uncertainty in terms of how this, no more, right? I don't really know. Let's assume two scenarios. I don't know whether you're being, I'm sure if you've been catching the news that's happening on COVID. In the last couple of days, Frank Cuomo, the governor of New York came out and articulated a study which basically showed that 15% of New Yorkers that are already having the antibody in their system, right? He has got to grow people, 20 million people which essentially means three million people are affected but the actual number of people that died in that, in the city so far is about 15, 16,000 which points to a 0.4 to 0.5 death rate, right? Which is much closer to the flu as compared to the nasty 5% that we hear about when it comes to COVID. The reason I bring out the statistic is to talk about the fact that is COVID something that's a game changer in terms of a disease or is it gonna revert back to the flu, right? That and the panic associated with that will have a huge difference in terms of consumers behavior, right? And if consumer behavior is gonna revert towards more like a flu then it'll be business as usual, not too many things will change. If on the other hand, there's gonna be a dramatic change in perception because of the fact that COVID behaves very differently and we need to change our behavior, then you're gonna see a lot of changes, right? To that extent, I would say you have to be a little bit more in the wait and watch mode right now rather than making drastic or dramatic changes to how your business model is gonna pan out because the reality as it pans out, we don't quite know yet. I hope that answered the question. Yes. So it was in a little bit of, you know, perhaps a gesture. Yeah, I mean, of course, we're all uncertain that how things are going to be but it's just that, you know, a lot of people have their debt repayment obligations right now and we're not sure that how it's going to be. So I'm sure it depends from player to player. So Amit, if I can come to you and ask your views and, you know, you don't have, like, you have your own smaller wages but you have your own, but there are, like Lakshman, they have like a pooling system, they do not have access. So what difference does it make in this kind of a situation for these two kinds of models? Sure. See, I think having an asset light model is certainly better. It gives you flexibility and that's why it is loved by investors. At the same time, I believe that there are businesses which cannot be built, at least in the beginning, on that philosophy because someone has to put in models, someone has to put in money and at least what we are doing right now as we speak, we have used our own capital, race to equity means, to buy those vehicle, prove a business model and then in study state, have some large company to put in money or put an asset on lease financing and again, we become an asset light. So at the stage of the company we are in, we are like an asset heavy company but that's not the study state picture. I think it's just a risk and reward at the end of the day and what's happening right now in the world is, I don't think so we should extrapolate it beyond the point because those are not business as usual because if that's a phenomena, I think 99% of the companies will cease to exist. So I don't want to just change the strategy because of this. So for example, in our case, we decided not to use spectral diminished scooters because we knew that the unitomics will be horrible and not only that, there's no path to make them better. Whereas with EV, we had a ray of hope that we will make a strong business case and solving for traffic and air pollution both. And yes, we knew that banks will not understand this particular product. So we have to go through this hardship, create a business model, prove unitomics metrics and then go to bank in second stage to ask for debt and then lease financing. So I think we continue to maintain that and I think it's okay for some of the entrepreneurs to take a longer path and riskier path at least from a financing perspective but if we create an ecosystem because of that risk, I think it's totally worth it. I'll come to you. So Amit said that we should not, and also Rajiv also said that we should not look too much into it and change the model right away. But do we see more collaborative approach going forward and evolve like for instance, if you have a grocery delivery also right now on your platform. So do we see that kind of approach to come because this is possibly the first time startups have seen these kind of so they would be ready for maybe for the future. So is that the way forward? Well, definitely I think this is one of the best times for a lot of startups to think of newer opportunities and also startup maybe in a new form. If someone would want to start up, I would say that this could also be an opportunity to find various things that can be done. Well, at Zip, we've always tried to create a business model which at the end of the day leads to profitability or leads to the better unit economics at some point in time. And we've always tried to pivot as a company whenever we looked at the matrix every three to six months and we see that this is a new thing which is growing on its own. Let's focus our energies more on to that. And I think we've been into this grocery delivery and food delivery over the last six to nine months. Definitely that has picked up a huge steam over the last one month where while we were serving three to four partners, now we're serving almost 20 partners, delivering goods for them, medicines for them and groceries along with food which has always remained a mainstay. But at the same time, as Amit pointed out, asset heavy versus asset light, one of the advantages, and I would say not, I would not call it an advantage but a collaborative effort that we have seen at least at our end is that since this is a time which had never envisaged, nobody had envisaged that and this is unprecedented. So people have come forward to support the leases or the rentals that we had to pay. We don't have any asset on our books and what we went to are lenders or people or investors who own these assets, we went back to them and asked for a kind of a moratorium that while we had a 24 or 36 month lease with them, we asked that let's continue that but let's give a one month break in that. We will extend the period towards the end of 36 months, make it 37 months but let's give a one month break if you can and positively for the vehicles which are not being used, some of the vehicles get used for B2C, some of the vehicles get used for long rentals, only the vehicles which were primarily for the last mile mobility sector. We took this help from our investors and they were kind enough to give us that leeway that sure these are unprecedented times and RBI has given us a moratorium to those leases to them also. So that helped a little bit like office rentals. Thankfully some of the office company, our office rental also, they were happy to give us some kind of a waiver for this period of lockdown. And that's what collaboration is all about I think and a lot of startups are coming forward to support. Insurance was one thing that we looked at for all our employees and thankfully there were insurance startups which could give a COVID insurance and at a good price to all of our employees. Yes, I think that's emerging as a new trend and how we can collaborate. I see Danzo doing a very good marketing where they're promoting all the four, five competitors together that we are all in this and supporting each other. Okay, all right. So Rajiv, I'll again come back to you once more. So would you also like, I understand you said that right now we should not read too much into it but still going forward, would it be like people who have just one sort of one vertical of servicing is that going to be a hit with the investors or people who have multiple who show that if not this we have this, if not this. So usually people do not dilute it because they want to remain focused but situations like these may demand that. So how do you see that? So just an additional point, I'll come to your point sort of about whether one line of service makes more sense or multiple lines of service make more sense, right? Obviously the logical argument to make is always that the multiple lines do but it's not quite as simple as that. But if I were to go back to the question that is being asked, what does really change at the end of this and going forward? The one thing that I think that changes right now is the notion of leverage. So until now for entrepreneurs typically the money coming in was either coming in as equity money or leverage money or venture debt or some other money, et cetera, et cetera. And the entrepreneur perhaps did not think too much about what kind of money they were holding in their kitties how much of it was not in their PNL so on and so forth. Generally technology based stories have always been a little asset light. So I'm assuming that asset light is a given for pretty much any of the conversations that we have right now particularly anything that's venture capital funded because if it's asset heavy then venture capital really cannot fund that because it becomes a much different story that's more private equity another kind of place that you typically have there. That said though, the problem with leverage is basically this, you always have liabilities of cash going on. What do I mean by leverage? It's basically what you've said sort of it is the loans that you have it is the payments that you have to make it's the rentals that you have to give out it is the EMIs that you have to give all those things fit into regular cash outs that have to go out regardless of what the cash in is. Those are always a little messy because when you suddenly have dips or blips then you suddenly need some people to come and save you give you the moratoriums, give you those kinds of things. So leverage is something that I think entrepreneurs will now need to start watching a lot more than they did earlier. So if I were an entrepreneur, I would say I don't care where I get my money from I'm getting it from venture capital I'm getting it from XYZ companies I'm getting it from venture debt I might get it from my suppliers also I might get it from my negative working capital I have all these options all of a sudden now I have to be very careful about where that leverage notion is coming from I have to be a lot more careful about that. That is one point that I think changes going forward regardless of what happens in terms of how things should go that's one thing that I think is important. We are going to definitely watch for that going forward with our startups in terms of what we're doing. In terms of the multiple services versus single service lines as a guiding principle I think multiple service lines make more sense because obviously you have a little bit of de-risking in terms of the service lines in terms of what happens but the big question there is are you in multiple businesses at the same time? That I think is a big question that you have to answer. If it is multiple, let me put it this way I started my career with Kolkata Mollipa very long time ago multiple services could be two different variants of toothpaste or it could be toothpaste and hair oil they are not quite the same if you understand what I mean So selling multiple services which sort of looks similar or the consumer behavior is very same or the kind of consumers you're targeting works for you or the brand is also pretty much aligned with that that makes sense but if you're going to look at multiple services that look like completely different businesses then that becomes a little bit of a distraction for the founders and the reason why that matters more in a startup as compared to large corporations is that large corporations can afford to have more people concentrating and focusing on their on multiple services and products but if you're a startup you've got one founder he's got very finite amount or she has got very finite amount of time available to her what does she do? She has to have a priority absolutely razor shop focused and if she starts targeting or he starts targeting multiple services then it becomes a little bit of a distraction So to that extent I think there is a nuance there that one needs to consider Okay, thank you that makes it Lakshana I'll come to you what's your thought on this I mean you are a you have an asset life model you do not have a very asset but still and but you have one segment that you would do it so how do you see your kind of model evolving from these kind of situations? Sure, so we totally believe in an asset line model and we're very passionate about it if you look at 90% of the people globally including India they were travelling with single person in the car and so for us we said okay we'll focus on the utilisation and we'll connect the people who are going from the same societies to the same companies and rather than increasing the traffic on the road let's put four people together in the car and they can cart so and obviously it's very cost-effective also from a people perspective right with different benefits of saving cost and reducing the congestion on the road yes we are you know as of now we are kind of single revenue model but also I think this is a very temporary phase it's not like this would continue for the next you know six months a year and right from day one in the history of estuary we have been very very you know we have worked on a very low cost model even today we are only a team of 30 people while you know start-ups of our size are anywhere from 100 to 200 people so we have always run this in a very different way most start-ups don't think like that and that definitely comes you know is very helpful in these times where everybody else is you know laying off people you know we are very focused on what we are doing focus like Rajiv said has been always one point for us while we you know we have single model you know revenue at this point of time we always had a belief that we will start with carpooling we will always be in mobility we will start with carpooling but we can easily expand to other asset line models in the same area and that's that's what we have been thinking in the past like few quarters and again you know these times crisis always brings the best of people I personally believe and in these times we are thinking okay how can we add value to our users that's the most important thing right it's not like you can just say okay we want different lines of businesses because we want it right what will add value to the users and that's what you know we are focusing at this point of time and see if we can expand in the same field of mobility but again this is a very temporary solution I you know temporary problem that we have and you know we can easily get through these difficult times this one part last question then you can move to question and answer from our attendee so what would be the most important thing that is required for the shared mobility space to gain confidence of the users right now if I can start with you Lakshmi and me then to others yeah so I think at this point of time what we've been already doing is over the last few weeks while people were not traveling we were communicating safety you know tips to them while they were at home you know what to do whether they were going out whether you know making sure people are taking this seriously not going out and we will continue that with we have built some safety features in our platform and people start commuting and we have been talking also serving a lot of our car owners and our riders to see how they feel about it and what we have seen is you know riders obviously very comfortable because you know a lot of them instead of using other means of transportation they prefer to use carpooling even car owners are saying like I said before that they are comfortable going with their friends people from their society so continuously you know also telling them that you know what are the safety steps they can take like you know I think wearing a mask for the next as people start commuting people start going out wearing a mask will be like you know we'll see 90 percent of the people doing that even if people step out to do grocery so giving them tips like you know wearing the mask when they are carpooling bringing sanitizers washing hands as much as possible you know those are the things I think we are already giving the safety tips so you know I think bringing these experiences of other people having people who have started carpooling in the first few days bringing their experience to other people and I'm bringing some of these concepts that you're already you're already interacting with some of your neighbors when you're going for grocery stores you're already interacting with when I go and to the company right I'm already interacting with a few people so carpooling will be more focused on people traveling with their friends with the people in the society people in their companies so just bringing these aspects to people and helping them to stay safer with some of the tips like mask and sanitizers. Amit very quickly if you can and then I'll move to others. Sorry so for us safety from coronavirus that's takes I think almost 80 percent of our communication followed by the sustainability part because as a company we care about these two things sustainability and traffic congestion so we are also saying that now nature has healed it got time so let's not go back whatever we got because of coronavirus let's preserve that protect that and we are using this opportunity to also push our agenda on the policy front we're not nudging the government they should invest into sustainable mobility infrastructure create incentive structure for EVs to happen for example so this is what is our focus here I'm sure EVs is one of the things that we all will look forward to a fast forward from you. I think one of the big things that we've seen happen is that a lot of players who were not maybe using our vehicles for deliveries are now looking specifically for an EV because now everyone has got some time of thinking or some time of you know planning and when they look at their unit economics their numbers definitely EV makes a lot of sense versus a petrol you know you're saving one-third of your costs on every delivery which is which is coming out to be a big you know focus area and over the last you know two three weeks thankfully we've received a lot of these queries that people are wanting an EV to shift their entire fleet you know from the petrol bikes so definitely as you know this is the time where we need to get the supply chains right and once the you know lockdown is open I think EV will get a lot more demand also you know on the side of personal mobility that you know we provide it's it's it should you know see a better you know pick up as times get right and even what we need to do at this time as a shared mobility player is to be closer to our customers I think one of the key things for us that we are doing at zip is you know doing the calls to our top users churned users to understand that what will what will be you know their requirements once they get back out of their houses while we're giving and we are staying in constant test by delivering something at least to them by grocery or you know food so that's what we are trying to do and you know keeping confidence sharing you know those nudges on social media and you know emailers coming out clean that you know this is what we are doing as a company whether even it's cost-cutting or you know strategies to implement at the moment we've been very very you know communicative and transparent to our users and I think that's what entail for for the better time okay okay just Rajeev welcome to you finally so of course this question is there that you know what what needs to be done to work on gain confidence and also I have an additional question for you that now with no regular solution no petrol use no diesel use we have seen the environment becoming too good for us so as the two gentlemen here said that you know EVs is where people may not understand EVs a lot but who will we see more money coming into the EV space so obviously EVs is a long-term trend that is going to continue to go on so Akash is absolutely right in terms of emphasizing it but I'm going to take actually a cue from what Lakshana said look you know when bad times happen the humanity has to show their best phase as much as possible right I think that I think is an important element of the story so I would actually say the emphasis for you know mobility obviously but most businesses at this point in time is to take care of the most vulnerable right so you've got employees you've got gig economy people you've got people that are working that do not have too much of an option or too much of a storyline they might be suffering those are the people that you should be very careful about those are the people that you should be putting most of your emphasis on at this point in time see the business is what it will do there is not too much you can do to make that business work at this point in time that's the truth of where you are at the moment right so you will do what you need to do in that space and you'll try and make that happen as much as you can but what you absolutely have to be very careful about is to make sure that that sustainability piece that Amit mentioned which is essentially to make sure that the ecosystem that is working with you feels safe feels you know sort of you know secure when they are working with you so that's one part of it as it well and there is another benefit to this right so from a brand perspective right when you think about you know what the typical consumer is going to take away right now the consumer's emphasis right now is mostly focused on these kinds of these kinds of stories these kinds of news everybody wants to know more about what's going to happen to covid how the economy is going to react to this how his or her life changes after all of this and at this point in time for you to come out with a solid message that says look you know we care we will take care of society we'll take care of people that are with us who are vulnerable that's a very positive message and that's creates much more sustainable angles for you going forward and that could be something that I think you would be looking at it is really true right now isn't it that you know there's very little marketing money that's being spent on consumer acquisition because there's no consumer acquisition to be made right now as a truth of this so I think the emphasis on the social side the emphasis from the human side the emphasis on the fact that you know the worst in crisis bring out the best in humanity I think is perhaps one of the under-emphasized parts that I think really matter in times like these and the brand actually gets a lot of benefit because of things like this I just thought I'll just go back to you. Thank you so much. So we have we have a couple of questions from our from our attendees so first question I think we are going to take is from Ashwarya if you can have the audio. Ashwarya has a question I think if you can have the audio please. Hello are you able to hear me? Yes we are Ashwarya go ahead please. So I wanted to understand from a consumer behavior and cost giving perspective does the panel think people will prefer to buy or rent vehicles or carpool with friends or colleagues? Okay Lakshina would you want to take that? Yeah I think people would want to carpool with friends and people from the same company and this home society again spending you know to buy a new vehicle is not something that everybody can do people are slightly worried about their jobs and their economy so you know my view is that spending to buy not everybody would be able to do when there is an option of carpooling with your friends in your society and the next question that we have is from Anand. Hi can you all hear me? Yes please go ahead. Okay great okay I have a quick question for Lakshina again keeping in mind that a lot of office a lot of offices a lot of organizations are going to prioritize employee safety as we speak how will carpooling impact the office goals once lockdown opens up and this is the biggest population of daily commuters as we see it so what is the impact going to be like? Yeah so Anand, as far as over the last few years has partnerships with 500 plus companies small large medium all sizes and actually companies are also worried how employees will come to work you know once the lockdown opens and they have over the last two three weeks they have already started reaching out to us for us to help them in this process because again you know public transportation and cabs is not people who want to do companies also are kind of you know struggling with the you know the cost and they don't want to incur a lot of cost trying to bring employees back some companies also had to ship computers as you know to the employees you know right when the lockdown happened without a lot of notice so they have to get them back so cost is also concerned for companies they don't want to spend a lot so we've been helping companies to you know send those messages companies have been sending e-mailers for SRI, carpooling, encouraging employees saying that this is an option available and they should use it to come with their friends and neighbors and the same company people. Okay Laxna we'll just take one final question and that is from Malini that we have for the audio please. Hi this is Malini here. My question is do you see a demand in the mobility industry post COVID as more people prefer commuting by private vehicles and how is our industry going to get up for them? Well as I might you know take this see I agree but you know that people would want to ride a personal vehicle but that also comes with the fact that not a lot of people would be in a position to buy a lot of you know vehicles who don't have the vehicles which is why mobility will you know remain and shared mobility will remain one of the tools for them to commute because commute can't stop and which is why a lot of players including Ola and Uber might come up with plans of you know rentals or rent-to-own plans or you know keep the vehicle with them dedicated driver vehicles also could be a norm but yeah a lot of players like ours would be thinking that what are the new normal as the word is out would be and then planning accordingly. Okay thank you thank you so much Akash we have really run out of time for the next session so we'll have to wrap it up here. Thank you so much Rajiv, Lakshana, Amit, Akash for being with us here today. I'm sure that this was very informative and educated for all of the individuals for me and people who are watching us on screen here. Thank you so much Mikey what I think is that as Rajiv said that it's too early to read into it and others also said that you know we need to commute we'll have to commute so things will evolve and we will find out ways to you know survive and everything will be back on track hopefully. Thank you so much everyone Pritima and over to you for the third session. Thank you Saurabh. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. Bye bye. Thank you all the panelists it was a fantastic session. Moving on to our next session and this also happens to be our last session for the day. This will be for about 45 minutes and we'll talk about chat services. Our speakers for this session are Ajit Karampani founder and CEO for Lenso, Raghav Belwadi founder and CEO Hype, Sam Subramaniam CEO Brand Capital, Arjun Svaini CEO fly row moderator for this session is Punita Sabarwal deputy editor entrepreneur India and over to you Punita. Thank you Pritima for the kind introduction. So in this session we are going to discuss the decommersed resale and renters of brands and how they are rethinking their business models. I have an interesting panel out here with three entrepreneurs from faction furniture and mobility space and a leading investor from share service space to give a great perspective to it all. So without much ado, let me start. Let me start with you Arjun first. Arjun, what's your take on the clothing rental space? I mean what kind of impact it had on the business and how you think you are going to cope up with it post COVID-19? So Punita for us my sense on the business is that currently of course the business is impacted because we are directly connected to occasion where and since occasions have stopped happening all orders have got cancelled but my sense with the businesses that post the COVID crisis there definitely is bound to happen a lot of economies slow down and people would prefer buying prefer renting against buying and rental shared services like ours would probably gain more traction what numbers were expected to achieve be achieved in 2023 would probably come by 2022 so that's my sense on this and with respect to of course hygiene since you know we've been one of the niche designer wear on rent kind of place five years since the beginning our primary focus has always been on hygiene and to you know at the same time we have to put it across to the user how we are doing it so that's one standard practice that we've been following for a while now so yeah my sense is that that there definitely would be a little slow down for a bit and then the growth would be faster than expected and as we speak at the moment we are also in the same time planning to have strategic partnerships with other brands and rather than just sticking to occasion where category probably start working on everyday rental categories that kind of model subscription models that we had anyways planned for the company but maybe post two years but I think it's time to work start working right now because buying consumption patterns will change and that's my sense on this okay sure so after when you talk about safety and being more agile towards how consumers look at it I mean are there any steps that we have taken can you share some more details around it sure so as the routine practice every product is dry cleaned and every product is steam ironed when as this is a routine practice for us not just because of covid but otherwise it's a stream iron and the way we package is that we have to pack the product at the garment in a ziploc bag and then put it in a cardboard box so it's basically not touched by the outside carrier anyway so this is the usual practice that we've any ways following till now but now currently we are in the process of thinking on innovation and developing sort of UV UV sanitization rooms for garments that you know garment has to be put in a room for a seven to eight minute period so it's virus protected so otherwise also our chemicals that we've been using for dry cleanings and steam iron acts against common colds and viruses but specifically for covid we've been working on this at certain level of UV is required to create these rooms and I think it's not just us every retail garment fashion brand has to come up with these because people would try and in other interesting aspect of the business for us is we were anyway in the midst of coming up with our pilots were done last year we were anyways in the midst of coming up with virtual trials even at the store people don't have to physically wear every product they can virtually on a screen try say about 20 shenvani's or 20 lengas and finally shortlist one or two and then physically try those so we are anyways working on those categories but now the pace has to be faster for those things virtual trials and all those would come up faster and that would be solving these problems and apart from this like basic SOPs on hygiene and covid sanitization for our staff being equipped with all this was anyways being a practice which we were following from first march onwards okay interesting coming to you Ajit I mean how are you dealing with these concerns from consumers about being renting a furniture renting being safe for furniture rental sure thanks thanks for inviting me over anybody hear me clearly yeah okay so um what we've been always facing this question it's it's it's not specific to covid how can somebody use a bed or a sofa that somebody else has used this is the question that we've been facing since the time we fully launched in 2015 um you know the first question that we start off with do you ask this question to hotels like Hilton you know the bed that you're sleeping on been slept in the past few days by somebody else right that's because number one the brand and the number two the amount of effort that goes into getting your bed speak and span when it goes into the customer's house so that's the same philosophy that we followed when it goes into your house the bed that goes into your house so the sofa that goes into your house it has to look better than new it is in fact we claim that it is new itself because what we do when it comes back from somebody else's house it goes through a full-fledged refurbishment process just like how Anjali was mentioning um and you know multiple rounds of washing uv cleaning um and sometimes we actually change the entire upholstery itself right so depending upon what is the extent of refurbishment that means that we do do that um but so the biggest and the most important thing for us is that when it leaves our warehouse it has to the customer that is who is going to use it and going to pay for it he or she should not feel that she's using a rental product it has to be better than you and an Indian customers are finicky enough to say that hey I um I'm paying for this and I expect the best just because it's rental doesn't mean that you need to give a lower quality policy that's that's been the mantra for Falenko from day one so so yeah so it's a it's a multi-step refurbishment process in fact we have the largest refurbishment center in the world uh furniture rental is not very prevalent in worldwide so you've seen that we seem to be the only ones having the largest facility it's it's an air in Bangalore now we're setting it up in all of the places you've realized that it is like a mini factory to do to actually refurbishment um so yeah so uh difference between pre-covid and post-covid is just that we're going to re-emphasize the fact that we already do it it is as good as new your furniture is as safe as anything else that is out there inside a hospital inside a bed which is inside an ICU which is as clean as it has to be over to you Puneetha. So but during this time has there been more concerns coming from consumers or you had to put the point across in a different manner all together in terms of marketing and drug? Yeah I mean for one the operations are shut right now so we aren't marketing anymore there are no messages going out as of now except for customers per se so new customers um well it's not happening as yet so no sales are happening but then yes there are plans if you go to a website right now you will already see as to what are all the things that we are doing from a COVID-19 perspective we will increase the messaging on that front we basically have to say everything that we do in some form or sense it will be through video tutorials it will be through customer messages multiple different channels are going to be used to convert this particular message as of now because sales are not happening no questions are being asked but I do expect that some of these questions might come here and there. Okay sure so Raghav coming to you as a luxury mobility startup what are you doing to minimize the impact? So hi when we're hit by COVID whether it's luxury space or we're in a kind of border between shades services but at the same time we're also in luxury luxury from an economy point of view I didn't think we are worried much but when the COVID issue hit the entire globe and the world went back to its basics that everything needs to be hygiene certain things have to be in certain fashion and when we look back our own operation manual and our SOPs our cars have always been seemingly clean as somebody already said the expectation is very high under any category especially in luxury it's actually it's even more so cars have to be speak and span they have to be in sparkling condition so we always had sanitizers wet tissue papers newspapers mineral waters and this came as part of our industry is vertical but then the emphasis is now more on like we added like thermal guns to check temperature I don't know whether we're going to use it for like ever but at least in the beginning months after the lockdown opens we have started installing like when we started our startup we we did these breath analyzers mandatory you know at the end of the day shopper is a shopper and before and after the trip we wanted to make sure the safety of the passengers so now this is another phase for us so the thermal guns are going to be part of our inventory now before and after including the shopper which is who is the main carrier of all the passengers and indeed and you know it's kind of sanitizing the entire car we are in discussion with a couple of you know entities where we could there is a blast and clean kind of system somebody had given a demo which is very interesting slightly expensive but we are you know arguing with our providers that we should go for this but because this is irrespective of COVID-19 these things may be prevalent in future you never know you know because we cannot hit the you know inventory whenever there is a crisis like this so but you know so as as Ajit was saying the since we have stopped completely some of the economical shared services mobility can offer free cars and you know free transport to the government and to the health workers we couldn't do that because our segment was different but we tried to do that as much as we can but the time we have right now utilized in preparing this checklist much better for future adding a couple more things for any pandemic outbreaks like this it could be something else tomorrow so our ability to disaster management you know address has to be something better we are working on this other than this you know as Ajit said again there is there's not a lot of marketing communication we do we sent only one message when that went out from my desk as CEO that this is what we are taking measures and we're not going to be operating in these cities and afterwards we are only keeping our customers entertained with some boot camp you know and stuff like that so that we don't you know hope their mind in thinking every day can make the same message over and again but things are in place we are working on that once the lockdown and everything is coming up we're going to decide to share the checklist and what we have done and how we have used this okay sure so coming to you sam there are a lot many shared services businesses in your portfolio so and like in green room tax session you also mentioned there are still shared services business in Sam capital is investing even now so have you taken a different lens all together to look at the kind of investments you would be making again in shared services space so I'll say this first thank you for having me and very refreshing to hear how the positive outlook from the three promoters on this panel I'm a I'm a cup is completely full optimist and the light is inside the tunnel optimist okay I'll say it this way you see a lot of the world today is trying to evaluate this crisis from its weakest point okay as Winston Churchill would have said it he said it in 1942 this is not the end you know we have seen some improvements in different markets this is not the end this is not the beginning of the end but it is the end of the beginning and that's extremely important for us to have perspective it one important thing to know is this is a moment in time and the moment when time and people and businesses whatever we do in our life should completely still and it'll stay there for some period of time for one thing where I think a lot of people are underestimating the power of humanity is that no virus can beat us I've studied now in the last four weeks the plagues back in 1500s the series of plagues and the Spanish flu in 1918 after every one of those the world came back with more innovation more strength more success and not less Shakespeare wrote some of his best plays during the plague lockdown okay so and we learned how to make vaccines so much better after the 1918 Spanish flu which actually killed one in six Indians one in six Indians died today we have about 800 some Indians dying guys let me tell you three to five people dying every day in bombish strain in various accidents three to five people so that is that is about 120 130 people dying every month in accidents and how many people die in car accidents that number is zero now okay so the total number of people dead in India is actually less this month with covid than without covid what i'm trying to explain to you is there's a lot of fear there's a lot of worry there's a lot of pain i'm i'm addressing the root cause of this all and i'm saying that our habits our behaviors we will go back to it completely and we'll go back to it with raging zest because we will want to go back to normalcy that is the only way we would have told this virus and ourselves that we have defeated it so that's one thing and mark my words we're going to get to that that may take six months four months number two shared services specifically right why do people go to fulenco why would people rent clothes or a car if you can afford if you can buy 10 maybachs and Mercedes-Benz's you won't go too high if you can afford the the latest sabi asachi clothes and you can just buy them you are infinitely rich you won't rent the reason the fundamental crux of shared economy is that we want to aspire for something that we can't afford of a certain quality so people are renting a jeets furniture if they have to buy a furniture for their office they can't afford that quality furniture they'll get below so they are stepping up that is human we all want something better that we can afford so we say let's not own it we only need it for a period let's enjoy it and we save some money it's both okay if the shared services is bad quality people won't take it fundamentally people are learning 30 40 years ago 50 years ago rentals were not so big for apartments in bombay today is very big the reason is you make a rental contract with somebody they don't kick you out in six months it's a contract but 40 years ago people worried the same way furniture rentals a jeet will give you a furniture for three years and if it breaks he'll replace it he won't he won't say screw up so there are contracts that are systems that it trust and people people rent and the garments that that we heard about yeah why not it's such big business in america where i came from why because people want to wear at different cocktail res when they go out for every party why shouldn't they so all i'm saying is the construct that these things will go away is completely a fallacy it'll stay it'll get stronger but the problem is in the near term cash flows are affected for for these companies business is shut so those companies that can manage cash flow that can survive and sustain will actually come out stronger and those that cannot some of them will die we have over over 800 companies in our portfolio all of them are ramps i fully expect 20 30 40 companies to really suffer but i fully expect you know we have grophers and big basket and these kind of companies in our portfolio they are done phenomenally well in this closed down in this lockdown so my point is we have invested in a lot of shared service companies uber air bnb torah caps blue smart nest away lots of them we have more than a dozen already and i think going forward what'll happen is the reason why people went to shared service is not because they're poor it's not because they didn't have money to buy the car it's because they want different experiences with the money they have they don't want to just live it so like this company called saffron stays they let you go for a holiday and stay in a different villa okay that is actually a unique experience you cannot buy a villa in all those places you go so they give you that slice of experience and that's what people want that is what youth want that trend will remain they're extremely bullish in the last four weeks i was just telling in the green room we've done an eight investment committee approvals for new deals and all of that three are shared shared services so innovation is alive and well show sam thanks for the detailed perspective so when you talk about staying and surviving and different kind of shared services you would have invested in are you seeing new kind of business models emerging and are these shared service businesses looking at different kind of privates then would look at post covid yeah it's a very it's actually a brilliant question uh it's what i forgot to mention when i said these companies you know what you know what i say success during times like this i'm a 9-11 survivor i was badly injured i survived right and i think back at that time i think back at that time and look at the biggest companies in the world today amazon google facebook microsoft all of them even apple apple was only a one-dollar stock around them so these companies have were all born beyond that crisis people said in 2008-9 that the clo cdo trading markets real estate investing will die contrary real estate crisis in new york at an all-time high so my point is people will have to pivot people will have to change and do whatever cash flow is a continuous problem for all these companies even during good times now it's a freeze revenue freeze it's a problem they'll have to negotiate deals and many of them are doing it many of our portfolio companies negotiate ask employees to take a pay cut for a period of time okay ask reduce your cash burn you might have to go back to investors one of the mistakes i always see in many companies in india which i saw less than silicon valley they're obsessed with the shares they own to a point of driving it down to zero but it is times like this driving down to zero meaning this is the time to sell if you have a company worth hundred crores it was worth hundred crores today it's worth only 30 and you own 60 percent today is the time to sell 10 of that if you have to at a distress valuation and get time to fight another day and you may come out of this and be worth thousand crores but if you don't give yourself the chance then you will probably die so it is sort of like getting a vaccine in time for somebody who's sick or who could get sick or a medicine in time for somebody who could who is sick it's it's life and death for some of them but some of them are pivoting i'll give you an example could if there is a company that is in the shared car services or company a restaurant for example a which is not shared services and that is facing death is it smart for them to partner with zomato and start doing a dark kitchen for a period now and then come back and later open the restaurant the answer is yes so the thing is we'll have to do some draconian things during this time to survive some of our companies are doing that and the the truth is some of them may not do it and the ones who are unwilling and more rigid and refuse to be flexible and and and they exist and those will suffer those will suffer hard because this is the time these companies need cash and they'll just have to do whatever it takes to find them to live to fight another day that's very important so these privets are very key i encourage all promoters listening to this to be flexible a little bit during this time you might have to change your product itself from being a fine dining restaurant to a dark kitchen for a period of time you you might have to do things like it if you don't do it if you refuse and be rigid and saying this is my business principle i won't change then we won't survive the pandemic those kinds of deaths are far bigger than the deaths due to the pandemic itself so we'll come back to you again sam thank you all the entrepreneurs all three of you so are you thinking about any kind of privets or new kind of business models going forward is there a plan b as an entrepreneur you would have prepared during these times so in the in the mobility space especially sam is right you know so almost all of us here are more experiential and no matter even if you have a buying power you can't just keep buying because there's no end to that so you have to reinpick something and plus whatever you buy let's say even if you buy a Rolls Royce in Bangalore you can't carry along with yourself if you go to Delhi in Delhi so our positioning it could be for anybody so from for us this positioning is very important and also people once they get used to certain class of quality they would want to have that award and they get wherever they go so that's one so as for us I think I think as Anjan said people are people are not blocked from traveling traveling is movement of humans is one of the most basic nature of the species you know and that has been now forbidden so even today we have about I mean in the last one and a half months we have received about in 70,000 calls asking us pressurizing that no we have police clearance we have these politicians approval and we need a call to go to this and there were guys from Bangalore who wanted to drive over to Delhi and somebody is ready in Bhopal you know we had situations like that so it made us believe that okay so we can't operate it now so that's that's pretty much here now but once the lockdown is over with all our precautions I think there will be sudden outburst which is good for business you know people would be one they'd be hesitating to go with I'm sorry if I'm saying this to Sam but overall our kind of services where it's a it's a point-to-point pick-up and draw when they're not really committed on the quality and the ambience of the quality inside so people may be hesitating initially I would say so we come in as a good option for them that because it's totally sanitized and it's your own free space it's not for hygienics the core quality is very high so we have a demanding request right now so we have already booking starting in end of May, June, July, August, September until that we already have to give whether we're going to execute that or not is a different thing depends on the situation but yes we don't we see this of course last one and a half months was a blockade once this is over I think we see an opportunity we have used this downtime to improvise on products and partnership and we have come out very well we have a good runway and we are just hoping that you know we don't have to jump onto any plan B per se as of now and kind of look forward to welcoming the you know removing the lockdown situation for us Neeta I am a 1000% believer of that every piece of fashion should be rented and not a single rupee should be spent but till we get to that situation in the country where you get accustomed to renting every day wear also as a brand as a philosophy with rented band with flyro we follow that buy the basics and rent the iconics so all the heavy stuff like a sabbisachi lengai is what you rent and like a simple cotton kurti is what you buy is the philosophy for us and at the stores there is about 30% section which sells the everyday wear so for the time being as you know sam rightly pointed out that you have to survive you have to add some revenues to get the boat rolling so we would definitely be selling till the time our longer vision of you know getting every people used to renting every day and subscription models pick up so that's the way we think it forward at the moment if i may add punita for lingua slightly in a different space touch it luckily for us it's a subscription business all the houses that we have furnished till date they remain so of course you're not able to pick them up for the ones who want to give up but then nobody's moving anywhere at this point of time so whatever was the revenue as of end of February and mid of March is our revenue even today so we get subscription revenue coming in so we're able to get 97% of our revenue as of last month there's a little bit of a leakage here and there and PAs and stuff like that but revenues are holding and that is basically because of the model and somewhere i would say shared economy subscription rental these are all synonymously used but i would vouch for the subscription model specifically wherein once you give the product plus offering to somebody then you get your money over a period of time you know netflix and prime and i would call for lingua in the same in the way in so that helps because if you build your cost structure around it then you don't have to worry about immediate things that you need to do and i'm not saying that there's no impact to us we have to wait and see how things will change for the lockdown but there too i'm bullish i'm in the bucket that sam is pointing out basically i believe that people are not going to jump and go and buy beds and they're going to think about think twice before doing that but then beds and sofas are more basic than than luxuries so i believe that they would continue to rent and more people are going to jump onto the bandwagon of what i call as furniture subscription so no pivoting we are absolutely on the same lines revenues are holding still cross cross structures have been trimmed of course we are working very hard on that front but we are a cash flow positive company so all that is helping out and we're just waiting for we want that the light that sam is mentioning in the tunnel you want to see that as soon as we see that i think we'll be in a better position i would like to add in further from the revenue perspective that you know for us the occasions have got cancelled so that's why people haven't you know taken those orders or they haven't booked those orders but occasions will happen they've got cancelled for a bit i think we the revenues that we've lost we that they haven't lost basically they've got postponed he would eventually get them once the market opens up and there would be more number of weddings than planned by the end of the year okay so do you all think that there will be new kind of shopping experiences that will emerge post covid 100 sorry sam go ahead shopping experiences what love as a retail brand i mean the way you interact with your consumer or the consumer looks at your services see i'll tell you guys i repeatedly i've i have done in the last two weeks about 20 video interviews like this and every one of them there is a pervasive fear that our life is going to dramatically change it will change see compared to uh i'm sure many of you have been to switzerland japan germany even some parts of america they're all substantially cleaner than we are even people like in japan long before covid i remember first time i went to japan in the 90s uh they wear a mask in the underground in japan even in those days okay so they they're substantially at a higher level of hygiene than we did we were a little bit relaxed chill we were happy which is why the venals wanted to be here right i'm not there my my point is we will become a little bit cleaner we will we will wash our hands more when we check the water power on the street which i will still eat it will we will check a little bit we will become better this virus will go away guys this will go away okay and this is going to kill kill less people than the normal flu at the end of it so i'm going to de-anchor every chance i get against the fact that our life is going to go for a toss it won't we will go back to exactly the way we shopped in lukinvala market the way we did before i'll tell you even people uh i used to be from a family of means right so i'll tell you i remember the story of buying a a a a hast instead years ago in 2003 and the and the shop was not it was closed in nyork right and for some reason so i i had to order it uh online or on the phone i was so frustrated because i'm paying so much money for a bed and i can't see it why because when i was young i still wanted to i was this habit of touching and feeling everything that i used to buy right so what i'm saying is we won't dramatically we will change we'll become cleaner we'll become better i don't think we'll change the way we eat in restaurants we go to a shop and buy things but yeah will we go to the shop looking for nails and hammers no we'll probably buy that online but we'll still go to a gallery to buy a painting people will still go to a fashion boutique to buy try on a nice gown or a suit and buy it i don't think there'll be tremendous change there will be on the margin some changes we learn online groceries much better online shopping much better telemedicine much better all those things i can understand utilitarian things we will save our time but on the other shopping that we do buying furniture if we are spending a lot of money just driving a car i don't think we will change that dramatically um there may be little changes people will ask for hand sanitizer people will ask for a mask maybe if it's crowded but in the near term i think in 10 years we'll forget the mask as well that's my view i agree i think um you know actually as far down this is not going to change everything forever but um in my opinion if we see larger startups who have been heavily funded retrenching their man power it's a sad story but this is the time for all the startups if they can just hang in there somehow manage their without revenue the the runways a couple of months maybe this is extended until may i don't know god knows when if you if you have learned the art of somehow keeping the team together uh do something which is more productive so that you are a lot more prepared you don't need to have like a like a plan be to change your activity or business mode but at least you have an answer your own surviving skills this is just another challenge like without funding a lot of startups die without man power a lot of startups die without the business opportunity a lot of startups die so this pandemic is all pandemic is also like one of those crisis so nothing to overcome you will be surprised probably if there is a demand for your business model a good business opportunity once it opens up but then i think otherwise it's a hockey stick it's going to come back and regularize and become normal but at least it would leave all of us all the entrepreneurs with a strong message that how you would have survived in such total lockdown kind of a situation which is more interesting to me than than anything else if i may add punita i think consumers they're shopping with price in mind quality in mind you know all of those aspects right design sense you know all these different parameters that consumers use i think to sam's point we will always go back to that in some sense maybe during the short period of time safety might go up a little bit yeah is my furniture clean you know but i think over a period of time and that's where brand makes a difference if as a brand you stand for good quality well-priced safe product customers will start accepting it and it will go back to the norm is what it says so brands we as companies have a lot of responsibility in portraying that our products are safe and the economics will work the same way it is i mean you can't suddenly uh double your price or decrease your quality by half none of that will work you will have to give best products the best quality in the fastest possible time and that that company which is able to manage it profitably is going to win the race see i'll tell you our investment strategy right sometimes i'll tell you to uh to your point mate about some big leaders suffering you saw several large companies some of them uh they didn't focus on profitability or margins they focused only on gmb on growth and they were already a little bit weaker going into kovat big ones some very big ones they were going to lay off people anyway they were already in that situation in november december january uh the post we work uh fiasco profitability and cash flow of startups became as important as as revenues and then in that environment the way i view it and the way brand capital views it is we think that the strong followers some of them and the strong number two is number three is number four since these verticals are very good to be invested in because the leaders their business models are being questioned they're generous uh they're generous cash spending business model and not the frugal business model uh has been questioned come into question so the thing is some of them are weaker more weaker because they've loaded already so they will take a hit and some of the nimble some of the nimble's number two number three number four can come in from left flank right flank and get ahead and we have already made some investment based on that thesis uh now dating more than a dozen months because india has been going in a slow slowdown for about 15 18 months already so that has played out well for us those number two number three number fours are actually moving forward now in this slowdown we think with our capital and others capital some of these companies will actually get ahead and gain market share that's what happened to lift lift was way behind uber and there was a time lift was uh uber offered a billion dollar value for lift if you remember that and look at lifts value later it was over 20 billion so the thing is i think uh many times when the number two number three number five people play uh do a good job they can actually get ahead farther and faster during a time like this as we move on i think uh questions have started pouring in so we'll read out some of them you have some fans from audience audience some fans one question from mr. Roy we have is uh what kind of changes are going to be there to the funding opportunities and the shared service space going forward sam i think you can answer this best can you uh i think your your voice became a little sing song i didn't hear it fully can you say that again please sam uh there's a question about what kind of changes are we going to see for the funding opportunities in the shared service space okay i again nothing will change people will evaluate companies the same way they evaluated before uh the market is large and the market is growing because the millennials are not going to dramatically change their behavior i'm sure you also on tv the millennials refused to leave the beaches of florida from spring break there was virus and they were trying to close florida and they refused to leave um the people in the uk were taking their cars and going to the holiday places on the coast and uh lakeside in scotland see my point is millennials are our future they are the ones who are going to make us rich they are the ones who are going to take care of us when we are in the hospital that 40 years from now the truth is their their behaviors will actually amplify so they are a shared service uh loving segment and they are the future they're going to grow investment thesis will not dramatically change people will follow the demand but people will look for a little bit more risk management in these business models okay people will look for that kind of prudence um if if there is a promoter panel promoter group where they do not have a numbers person somebody who understands class for finance cashflow all that that's now for me a flag uh to to take off because typically uh all these shared service companies even other companies they focus heavily on the marketing person the business development person and they focus on the technology person okay now the the two things they don't focus on the person who can get them the money in because that's difficult and the last thing they don't focus so much on is the numbers person who keeps track of the cashflow finance internally and even if they have that person they rarely respect that person because these businesses are valued on gmv at gmv and grove i was that person in many businesses uh where i i raised the money i built the business but they always felt that they are the the pinch hitter and that is what builds the business but the problem is the importance of this other people became more and that's all so we just need more robust teams more better articulation of the of the idea and when you go in front of remota sorry an investor to pitch articulate the risks clearly acknowledge the risks and then and then come up with a have a plan to deal with it i'm not talking about preparing for a pandemic nobody can i'm talking in general just make it a little bit more robust sure so going forward would we see more investment flowing in or there would be less investment in shared service space what's your view on that in the next 10 years you will see it go up so high we will all be shocked we will look back at this time and laugh it will be so dramatically high uh you will be shocked there are multi billion dollar telemedicine companies coming up i mean yeah and education this is an area i'm i'm i love children's education k through 12 and college all my nephews and nieces everybody are studying teleeducation now and they are in three different countries america europe and india all of them are studying teleeducation and they're all learning very well so it is so i'm just saying that people are now see i'll tell you i i bought online fruits and vegetables and eggs for the first time in my life myself during this period i i did not do that before somebody else was buying it in my home and this time i'm alone so i bought it now i'm used to it i know it comes really well nicely packed in a cold box so i'm that unknown is known now so now i'm a convert this has happened to millions of people so if you see big basket and grow first if you go to big baskets app they show the number of orders per day it's around 280 thousand the number they and they can deliver triple of that they have more orders but they don't have the ability to deliver so the number of people who have come in uh to these platforms is numerous today and that will be the same case for agit for uh and for all the shared services companies that that we deal with now the question is how do you navigate the demand how do you prioritize the demand and how do you drop so the amount of money that goes in will be multiples in the next decade sure another question uh from the audience we have is from mr vinod valdeva the question is for time being the door is closed for ai or automation anything connected with human capital that is employees or labor focused would be in great demand just like corona virus i think it's more of a comment than a question so we'll move on to the next question uh there is another one uh from priya darshani she's asking do you think it would be a good idea to give pre-lockdown membership offers at lower prices which they can use once the market opens arshal would you like to take this one yeah sure so you know uh just not just for us but otherwise also a lot of brands have been coming up with coupons that you know buy this at the moment and then you get 20% extra use 40% extra later with the consumers mindset for the time being right now people are very conservative they don't want to shell out a penny out at the moment so these uh propositions and these discount offers are not running through very very well at the moment because of uncertainty and i think it's more than practicality it's the fair side causes which is working at the moment so everybody wants to hold on to the pennies that they have and not splurge at the moment even for the sake of heavy discounts at later on so this is the mindset going on right now so we are also holding on these things for the time being so one uh my answer to the first question regarding the investors i think sam is right um in the last six weeks we closed our first ever funding we had more people who are individual investors from the wealth manager who reached out to us and we are able to i mean we are really not pitching in for this time it does to talk to people and talk about our venture a lot more relaxedly so um uh but the good thing about COVID for us is like investment has not stopped maybe investors are looking for better avenues where they see that steady uh business models or the or the long-term gains for them rather than what is going to go overnight success so uh i i i don't think i don't for those investors who are looking at long-term and steady business models i think there's a question for you from the audience so do you see b2b opportunity for financial central startups to collaborate with colemics spaces there's always that opportunity in fact we had a collaboration with nestaway in 2015 um so that is always there but uh one of the reasons we didn't explore it any further is because we were seeing enormous demand from b2c itself so when uh when funding is finite or resources financial things are finite then you would choose on the uh on the on the areas that you would rely on which in our case it is b2c so b2b uh per se it's a uh what what the co-leaving companies look for is an asset financing uh business model uh furniture entail especially for lanku is not an asset financing business we are into lifestyle so we tend to shy away from that kind of uh you know arrangement but always if there is an option to co-brand where we are creating a co-leaving thing along with for lanko we would be open to it but per se we are not looking out for any such opportunity at this point mainly because uh we have we have assets only for our own b2c demand and that demand is very high at this point okay so considering the possibility of time we'll just take one last question so uh one of the questions is do you think third party assessment will increase that who can certify and give high bean rating so do you think all of you think that's going to work for your platform um but yes or no um i would i would call it balanced um is there a possibility yeah there is a possibility but i think it'll need some kind of a government mandate uh to push it hard um i don't see how a third party rating unless it is government back can give a better uh you know consumer comfort than what the company itself uh that's it i'm not saying no to it maybe there is a startup that can come up and certify this just that it can't be universal one uh what goes into furniture may not apply for clothes may not apply for cars these are all different kinds of you know products so it's a universal platform maybe a little bit harder but that's it you know never say no maybe there is a startup which is out there which can do that so i think this is it's not it's not something like really big as a as a problem because for us people are really hard to get and this comes as standard expectation um the hospital may not be much uh it has to be an inbuilt capability of ours in the industry that we are operating for us also i think unless the product is not new like it doesn't go out of the warehouse and the consumer is the direct uh you know that the mirror where we have the moment that the ziploc of the outfit opens there's a feedback right there but yeah as Ajit says that you know we never know never say no for new things but yeah directly the consumer tells us our feedback so we are all all our shared in fact not just us for cars at the furniture also we are very very very uh cautious about hygiene since the beginning of our business because we have come across like a see india has always always have rental services like mom and pop shops but we've come to that niche level renting so we are very very cautious of hygiene since the beginning but now more promotions and basically it needs to be put out more frequently than than what we've been doing so far interesting on that note we would like to conclude the session and they're hopeful that business will pick up once the lockdown ends with the great positive attitude of Sam and the rest of that view of all the entrepreneurs so I would now uh I would like to thank all of you and uh would hand over the mic to Ritu Maare at the rentry to conclude the seminar thank you thank you very much uh thanks Panita and thank you to all the panelists I think there were some brilliant uh inputs that have come from all of them and Sam you were brilliant as usual you know uh giving some great views and sort of giving a global perspective on things um so I mean I've attended the uh the seminar uh uh once like when I was moderating the shared economy in real estate and then also understanding the consumer goods and the mobility space I think there have been great takeaways that have come out of it and are from an opportunity standpoint as I pointed out earlier also that circular economy is where we are really headed so uh you know we are moving from um you know use and throw to use and reuse and recycle and use it till you know the anything on an asset can actually give us some kind of returns to it so that is the model we are model of the future now what we'll set it apart and make it more profitable and great as a business is how good or how much justice is the entrepreneur able to do with it uh you know some of the greatest brands are built in adversity I feel and today the uh as Sam also I think mentioned the the person who will really win this race is not for somebody who will be able to provide it more quickly but rather somebody who will be able to provide it more hygienically but and would be able to assure the brand would be able to bring assurance of safety and security to the customer now whether it is a real estate space or whether it is a furniture or fashion or um mobility I think going forward that is going to be the key trend wherein uh the brand which will be able to give the comfort and highest standards of quality will be the brand that will actually do the kill over here um secondly I think B2B is going to become a very important aspect of it whether it is about co-working or co-living there is going to be right now what's looked like a more B2C business which was very individual let it is now going to move towards B2B there is going to be an increased demand of corporates for co-living spaces there's going to be increased demands of big enterprises looking at a thousand um you know bedroom uh kind of a co-living space so all that is really going to change a lot and therefore our businesses now need to be enabled to be able to bring that B2B service into it I really feel that another service which all of you might want to look at is the cleaning services because I think they're gonna be very very high in demand because people are wanting to you know people who thought the deep cleaning was something that they did maybe once at the early is now probably going to become a once in two months kind of thing because you know cleanliness is going to be something that is gonna stick to everybody's mind even if covid goes away so let's be prepared and let's build business opportunities around it and thirdly I think there is going to be a change in consumer behavior as such so I think the first panel pointed out the people would want to live in spaces which are closer to their offices they don't want to get into a big traffic pool which means that they have to share spaces in the cars or cabs or whatsoever they would want to live to places which are closer to their work they can walk down over there and therefore you know so we might have more co-living co-working kind of spaces emerging across the country they might not be as big as they earlier used to be because the earlier the thought was more about having more people in the same place now it's going to be on multiple locations so so that you know wherever there's more proximity is going to be the driving factor rather than the capacity of the people that can be put into the premises so that will create a whole new bunch of opportunities and I feel that you know as new entrepreneurs this might be a great time for them to come and explore branded co-ownerships you know so somebody like in fashion should actually be partnering with the fly rope or somebody running a furniture store should actually be partnering with Firlenko to explore other revenue options because straight vanilla buying and selling might not be the option in the coming times so these are some of the great takeaways I've had from this today and I thank all the panelists again a lot for coming and sharing their great views and we would love to probably have more of these conferences of course in physical spaces rather than on a webinar going forward thank you very much once again to everybody thank you thank you thank you