While digital offers companies the right tools to work from a remote location and on any device that they can imagine, workers from SMEs are the worst hit with little knowledge about new collaboration tools.

Globally, 16,572 people have died due to the coronavirus pandemic and a total of 381,293 positive cases have been confirmed. To take precautionary measures and curb the virus spread in India Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced a countrywide lockdown for the next 21 days. With the increasing number of coronavirus cases, there's growing concern about the business impact of a health crisis that Indians may not be fully prepared to deal with.

According to the latest report by Gartner, 54 percent of HR leaders have cited that poor technology and/or infrastructure for remote working is the biggest barrier to effective remote working. It’s become more critical than ever for companies in India to quickly build a robust work from home solution with the right strategy to ensure the safety of their employees and keep the business operations in a sustained motion. Equipping the remote workforce with regular online training sessions is also an important step towards ensuring balance, productivity, and business stability.

"In the wake of Covid-19, we at MobiKwik decided to adopt work from Home on 12th March and we implemented it from 13th onwards. We are providing complete assistance to our team members for seamless communication and to ensure smooth operations, company-wide. Our operations team works in shifts due to which they have workstations, so we organized rental laptops for all of them, configured them to our security protocols and made them available in less than 24 hours so that team could work seamlessly from their homes,” said Upasana Taku, Co-Founder and COO, MobiKwik.

While digital offers companies the right tools to work from a remote location and on any device that they can imagine, workers from SMEs are the worst hit with little knowledge about new collaboration tools.

“For businesses, it is important to evaluate and make necessary arrangements to equip remote workers at scale. Companies should check whether their workers can join virtual meetings and accomplish important tasks irrespective of their location with available devices and applications. Soon, companies might be required to build remote responsive workplaces and make quick proactive decisions in the interest of human life. During these trying times, the industry must collectively put the best foot forward and take the challenge head-on, " said Prasad Shejale, Founder & CEO, Logicserve Digital.

As the Coronavirus prompted Indian states to shut down schools in the interest of public safety, parents came under the pressure of looking after their children at home while managing work. In the light of the developing situation around COVID-19 in India, KLAY Preschools and Daycare launched it’s online learning and engagement program KLAY@Home.

Priya Krishnan, Founder and CEO of KLAY said, “In such trying times, we at KLAY, have been thinking about how to continue the learning for our children, thereby enabling parents to spend time positively with the family. KLAY@Home is an attempt in this direction. This has been a long vision in the making to support families at home.”

From large companies to small corporates to mid-sized tech companies and startups – businesses are scrambling to get their work from home solutions together as India observes 21-day lockdown. This is definitely a wake-up call for Indian companies who have been avoiding long term investment in digital solutions to build a robust remote workplace infrastructure