Gandhi's Talisman for Platforms
Leveraging the Power of Platform Strategy
I hope all of you staying at home and maintaining social distance when stepping out is unavoidable. Together , we can flatten the curve and help our health care workers do their job well.
We have earlier discussed about how the current Covid-19 health crisis is fundamentally changing the way we live and do business. One of the things which struck me was how the business is changing its DNA to cope up with the current crisis and the new normal that we might continue to practice even after the crisis is way past us. One of the most powerful and customer obsessed platform business Amazon is NOW trying to dissuade its shoppers from buying more. And this goes beyond just the Indian market where they are facing a supply side restriction but even in US where the demand has gone through the roof. Multiple reports indicate that Amazon stopped spending much of its advertising budget dedicated to Google’s search engine as well as cut down on those crazy promotions on its own platform and stopped nudges (buying recommendations) on its own website and app.
See you at the other end.
DTW
During the week, I pondered over the impact of Covid-19 on masses and felt almost embarrassed about privileges of our lives where we live in secured communities with food, health and shelter while constantly in touch with our loved ones and continue working from home over FaceTime and video Calls. Then I remembered my school’s CBSE textbooks which prominently displayed Gandhi’s Talisman.
In an economy that has been transitioning to be more manufacturing and service focussed and was under tremendous strain in agriculture sector , the most basic necessities for large population — food, shelter and health care — are all suddenly at risk and at once. This issue of RPML deals with the role of platform strategy for solving and providing some soccour to the millions of ordinary and mostly disadvantaged citizens suffering hardships during Covid-19 and resulting #LockDown. The broad problems and thematic approaches to solving them could be divided into three - Health, Food and Income.
Covid-19 is primarily a Health Crisis and the response could be divided into two-Preventive and Curative. Using Artificial Intelligence could help in making relevant information accessible for larger population and prevent them from failing for fake news. For example, multiple health organizations across the world have created COVID-19 self-assessment bots which are based on the Microsoft Healthcare bot service. This provides scale and reliability to the public health agencies and thus they can continue to serve themes disadvantaged sections of the society. Apple and Google are collaborating to create tools to help the public health agencies to accomplish contact tracing at scale without risking the lives of frontline health workers. Government of India has launched the Aarogya Setu Mobile App to rapidly help citizens identify their risk of contracting Covid-19 (coronavirus).
We still have to figure out our response for two more additional issues of mental health and people with disabilities. LockDown has resulted in putting additional burden and lack of support for people with mental health issues. Multiple initiatives have revived existing resources as well as develop new approached to tackle mental health issues. Increased cases of domestic violence and child abuse are also frightening and multiple forums are working hard to mitigate some of the ill-effects.
According to a recent survey by CBM, people with Disabilities and their caregivers are suffering due to lack of service providers and this has become particularly grave in rural areas. There are few who are using technology in creating resources for the care givers. Nayi Disha based out of Hyderabad provides essential information to families of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), help them find services and connect them with other families!
Food is a multisided challenge. In theory , we are self sufficient and certainly we have enough food to provide for every citizen. The challenge is matching food with those who need it. One of the largest platform for food security in India is Public Distribution System (PDS) ensuring food grains to about 80 crore population at subsidised and mostly free to below poverty line beneficiaries. It needs to be strengthened as most of the migrant workers are struck in unfamiliar places and may not have necessary documents. Using temporary authentication can help reach scale for the needy at the cost of some leakage. Other side of the food challenge is fortifying the supply chain and thus ensuring that the growers get fair prices. Lot of platforms including Ninjacart and others have pivoted to find new buyers for the fresh produce.
Multiple initiatives including Harvesting Farmer Network are using the power of social media platforms to create demand for the fresh produce farmers who have been caught between economic hardships and restriction imposed by #LockDown. Food tech entrepreneurs including InnerChef and FoodCloud have stepped up to provide cooked food to the needy.
Feeding India has initiated the ‘Feed the Daily Wager’ project to provide food support to daily wage earner thus giving them reliable supply of meals in the absence of employment opportunities.
The biggest challenge still remains loss of earnings and thus economic hardship may push multiple households into a vicious cycle of employment and poverty. Gig Platforms workers have suffered the most. Most of the measure like social distancing and contact-less delivery announced by the platform business including food tech, e-commerce and mobility have been band-aid at best. It is ironical that many large and small businesses have made contributions to the external agencies often announcing through Twitter and other social media platforms but have indicated not able to make wage payments to the most vulnerable workers. For example, Uber has created a hardship fund for its drivers to provide immediate monetary relief through the Uber Care Driver Fund, with an Uber-funded corpus of ₹ 25 crores to ensure support for driver partners.
There are still questions about the modalities and the eligibility of drivers to receive such monetary relief. The biggest financial inclusion platform available to Indian government is of course JAM - the trinity of JanDhan, AADHAR and Mobile. It remains to be seen as to how we can rapidly deploy it to provide monetary relief to millions of poor and unemployed Indians in rural areas.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I joined a group of volunteers to spread the power of gratitude with health caretakers around the world. This is a completely voluntary movement to collect a million gratitude messages for millions of health care workers.
You can also visit https://thankyoucaretakers.com/in/ to drop your own text/picture/video message of gratitude.
Gratitude for what I already have set me thinking about the inherent and assumed link between progress and addition. What if progress meant being able to delete or remove things. I recall one of the few religious philosophy books that I have read in recent times. I was acclimatizing for the KhardungLa Challenge 2017 in Leh and was staying with NotOnMap friends and picked up Letters to a Friend by Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna. Over my stay before and after the gruelling Ultra Marathon , I found great relief while reading the text and commentary by contemporary Tibetan Buddhist scholars. One of the verses which struck me is the lesson in removing things that might be holding you back.
There is pleasure when a sore is scratched,
But to be without sores is more pleasurable still.
Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires,
But to be without desires is more pleasurable still.
Let me leave you with an ancient prayer for all of humanity.
ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः
सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः ।
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु
मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग्भवेत् ।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
I Love You
Shailendra
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Very engaging!
Mental health is crucial at this time. As there would be relapses as well as new developments. As individuals it's good to stay connected with everyone you know and care about, specially the ones who may be alone at home due to lockdown or are in uncomfortable situations.
Very well written . We are yet to seen the behavioural change among consumers post covid 19 and the spending pattern . Platform business like Uber would take sometime to take off in coming few years .