The Covid-19 outbreak has taken a substantial toll on businesses - irrespective of their size and operations. While the entire nation is discussing the hard knock circumstances that the pandemic has created on businesses, many are revising their business plans, organizational policies, re-investing on the right strategies to combat business resilience.

As per various industry surveys and reports, start-ups are the hardest hit due to business flutter caused by the pandemic. A Nasscom report states that almost around 60 per cent of business to consumer start-ups are reported to face closing of their operations during the lockdown. It further states that there was a decrement of around 92 per cent in the start-up revenues and near about 40 per cent of them put a stop to their business temporarily due to low cash reserves. From financial setbacks to employee layoffs, start-ups have witnessed it all. But that certainly doesn’t mean that they have been knocked down entirely. In fact, many of them have converted the challenges into gleaming opportunities.

Some e-commerce and online service start-ups have enabled new norms of social distancing, while others across healthcare, education domains have retained their employees with reduced salaries, revamped their business plans with existing clients - all with the purpose of surviving the crisis. These start-ups are riding the wave of evolution amidst the crisis and are setting an example for others to rise and fight the unprecedented catastrophe. Considering the market conditions, they have taken wise decisions to first stabilize their operations and later think about achieving profits. Strategies can of course be changed post-covid. Some of these start-ups have joined hands too with central and state government.

Here are a few start-up categories that are prospering even in the crisis.

E-pharmacy start-ups - Amid the lockdown, e-pharmacies have become the support system to fight the deadly virus. Several renowned e-pharmacies have initiated free online medicine deliveries, easy availability of medicines and with such seamless features and apps, conumers are ordering medicines from these online stores. These are helping them to retain the social distancing norms too. Technology further is help these pharmacies to set beneficial features in their apps to track patient's enrolment, setting reminders for buying monthly medicines, and so on.

Edtech start-ups - Owing to covid-19 schools and other educational institutions have temporarily shut down to forbid group assembling. This has put impetus on the growth of online education or edtech platforms that are levaraging opportunity amid crisis. Start-ups like BYJU’s, Unacademy have registered havoc growth during the lockdown. With more and more students enrolling in digital education platforms, edtech or e-learning start-ups are witnessing an upsurge and are able to revive their operations. Industry report indicates that around 128.8 million visits have been registered during the lockdown period. Some of them have also raised funding with the help of their innovative methods of reaching out to the audiences even in such a crisis time.

Online Grocery startups- Start-ups have been in the forefront in delivering essential and non-essential items during the entire lockdown period. A time when lockdown was announced, consumers had no idea for buying essential things because almost all the stores were shut down. Online grocery start-ups came to the rescue. These start-ups have doubled its delivery services and their demand has seen an upsurge. Despite less delivery slots and delayed deliveryvdue to lockdown rules, they have worked dedicatedly to serve the customers. Big Basket and Grofers have received double the number of orders. Roughly the number of orders have gone up to 283,000 orders a day from 150,000 before lockdown. The firms are constantly meeting the customer expectations and further plans to strengthen their workforce to meet the increase in demands.

To know that these start-ups are leaving no stone unturned and are on a constant strive to strengthen their operations amid the hardships is a great thing. Investors, VSc are steadily showing their support and extending financial resources to further help them stabilize and revive. Government too is devising new plans for business to survive and eventually resuscitate the normal.