COVID-19 and Wuhan – The Commercial Capital

In order to prevent and control the spread of Novel Coved-19, Chinese Government imposed a full lockdown on Jan 23, 2020 in the city of Wuhan. All major roads and highways were blocked as a reason of the same and approximately 11 million citizens were placed in quarantine that lasted for an unexpected duration of 60 days.

Various severe challenges were imposed because of this lockdown. As Wuhan is considered as the circulatory system of the entire retail sector. Be it groceries or everyday supplies. And the lockdown acted as a barrier wherein the people were cut off from the communities and were locked up in their homes/apartments.

Soon after the declaration of the lockdown the first situation that came up was panic buying from the local stores. In order to prevent themselves from the risk of contamination arising out of contamination.

During this situation two biggest retail giants of china accepted the challenge to keep the quarantined residents supplied with all the necessary items during the isolation days. High degree of innovation and flexibility was seen in terms of skills, processes along with range of products and services offered.

Technology Transformation By Alibaba

With the help of its digital logistics platform, Alibaba became the first one to take a huge move in this direction. With rapid fast market understanding Alibaba identified and contacted all the major quality manufacturing partners, which reopened the mask and other medical supply units during the time of Chinese New Year.

Alibaba offered fast track shipping and tracking of all the critical supplies such as face masks, hand sanitizers and other essential supplies at best prices through its B2C and C2C marketplace.

Alibaba Didn’t stop here, with the help of its digital payment system named Alipay, they were able to collect a huge donation amounting to $1 million alone in the very first 8 hours.

When it comes to physical delivery and distribution, Alibaba’s Cainiao Network and its competitor JD.com are already in process of experimenting new automated technologies in a bid achieving an edge over Western rivals Amazon and Alphabet. 

Innovative Solution By JD.com Played An Important Role In Fighting COVID-19

If we talk about the examples, in 2018, JD.com had tested delivery in remote areas through drones, driverless smart vehicles etc.

After the lockdown was imposed, the first challenge that was faced by digital retailers was: Increasing the delivery capacity without moving manpower into the province?

Coming up with a solution JD.com and few other retailers deployed their new automated technology. Smart vehicles with loaded maps were remotely operated to deliver donated goods to hospitals and household communities.

The empty streets contributed to this experiment. Along with empowering the retailers to cope up with demand hikes without violating the Government laid policies and guidelines.

Major Challenge Faced By The eCommerce Giants:

As major roads and highways were blocked, it was a challenging task to deliver goods and essential items to remote areas affected by virus. Delivery to some remote areas that were still connected by small roads and ferries were consuming time up to 6 hours.

Here JD’s team came up with a creative and innovative idea of delivery using drones, which completed the task effectively in just 20 minutes.

Lockdown resulted in a huge demand of daily essential such as rice, flour, fruits, vegetables and other items. As a result of the same there was a huge transformation from offline to online stores. Which led to shortage of human resources to monitor these supply chains.

Smart Move by Freshippo (Grocery Subsidiary of Alibaba) & 7Fresh (branch of JD.com)

Grocery subsidiary of Alibaba named Freshippo, confronted the challenge by asking workers from shuttered restaurants and retail outlets to staff the supply chain and hiring them

JD.com’s 7Fresh branch quickly followed the suit. And in a short span of time were able to leverage these workers and had to provide them with least knowledge and skills in terms of e-commerce context.

Further leveraging the opportunity, 7Fresh significantly increased the production of ready to cook items with the help of the temporary catering staff that they have hired.

Similarly, MTDP, a super-app restaurant delivery platform came forward to offer its services for the delivery of everyday supplies by partnering with over more than 7,000 brick-and-mortar supermarkets to process digital orders and deliver to individual households.

Contact Less Deliveries:

Delivery workers are most prone to this situation as they are the one who will interact and get in touch with the consumer base. Putting their health at stake and may act as a vector in transmitting the virus.

In order to further reduce and minimize the risks, JD.com and Alibaba both took all the necessary steps like equipping their employees with facial masks, gloves and disinfectants.

Not only that further safety processes were incorporated in their routine, such as temperature checks, mandate disinfection after each delivery and final drop off.

The last mile delivery, which required customer signatures before drop off also proved to be major area of concern for the e-commerce giants as customers refused to accept the orders because of interaction with the delivery personnel and gated communities also refused the entry.

In order to overcome this situation, JD.com placed delivery boxes outside the gated communities and after placing the order in the box a QR code is sent to consumer informing the delivery of the item and requesting the receipt.

Other Initiatives By Alibaba To Fight COVID-19

AliHealth also got pace during this time, providing Covid-19 information through Taobao and Alipay. As the situation started getting worse, it started offering free online consultation on their platform.

As the businesses and Government of the entire world came on to the foot front to defeat the Covid-19 situation, the rapid success of Chinese e-commerce giants and their strategy is teaching the entire world, how to be tech savvy and access mass markets.

The post How Innovation Helped Alibaba Soar High Even During 60-day COVID-19 Lockdown appeared first on Growthonomy.

Click here to Download list of all Kirana stores in Noida providing home delivery of essential items

(See below for sector wise list)

Although e-Commerce is in the latest trend and with the advancement of technology, a change in consumer behavior has been observed. With people switching from offline market to the online market.

However, with the break of Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) and the lockdown that has been imposed because of the same. The traditional kirana stores are proving themselves to be the live savers, by operating under such pandemic situation and ensuring that the customers are at least able to fulfill their basic requirements like Groceries, milk and various other daily essentials.

Be it big departmental stores, government operated kirana stores, small society stores there are hundreds of stores in a locality and everyone is at the forefront to ensure that there is no panic that is caused because of the lack of daily essentials and we are able to overcome this situation.

Also another important thing to be noticed over here is, the kirana stores majorly operates on credit where the consumer pays once a month are still functioning. Wherein the E-commerce or online stores who have a bigger pocket are not even able to tackle this situation properly.

Therefore, these thousands of kirana stores which are available in every location be it mine or yours are putting in a great effort and even after risking their own lives are operating for us be it providing home delivery or in store service.

Below is a sector-wise list of Vendors or Kirana Stores for essential items (Grocery & Medical supplies)

PS: If we have missed out any store you are aware of, kindly leave the details in comment box and we will update the list. Also, try sharing the details of Kirana Stores or Medical Stores providing home delivery in your area so that a similar list can be prepared for other cities also.

Noida Sector 11 & 12

Noida Sector 14

Noida Sector 15

Noida Sector 15A

Noida Sector 17

Noida Sector 19

Noida Sector 20

Noida Sector 21

Noida Sector 25

Noida Sector 26

Noida Sector 27

Noida Sector 28

Noida Sector 29

Noida Sector 30

Noida Sector 31

Noida Sector 36

Noida Sector 37

Ambedkar Vihar Sector 37

Noida Sector 39

Noida Sector 40

Noida Sector 41

Noida Sector 42, 43, & 46

Noida Sector 44

Noida Sector 45

Noida Sector 47

Noida Sector 48

Noida Sector 49

Noida Sector 50

Noida Sector 51

Noida Sector 55 & 56

Noida Sector 93 – Village Geyjha

Noida Sector 99

Noida Sector 100

Noida Sector 104 – Village Hajipur

Noida Sector 128

Noida Sector 130

Noida Sector 134

Noida Sector 135

Noida Sector 143

Noida Sector 150

Noida Sector 168

Noida – Village Aghapurr

Noida – Village Asgarpur

Noida – Village Atta

Noida – Village Badoli

Noida – Village Baktavarpur

Noida – Village Bhangel

Noida – Village Challera

Noida – Village Chapraulli

Noida – Village Dallupura

Noida – Village Dairy Gurjar

Noida – Village Dairy Pandit

Noida – Village Gulavali

Noida – Village Jhatta

Noida – Village Kambakshpur

Noida – Village Kondli

Noida – Village Mangrauli

Noida – Village Mohiyapur

Noida – Village Momnathal

Noida – Village Morna

Noida – Village Nagli Nagla

Noida – Village Nagli Sakhpur

Noida – Village Nagli Sultanpur

Noida – Village Nagli Vajidpur

Noida – Village Nalgada

Noida – Village Nithari

Noida – Village Rahillapur

Noida – Village Raipur

Noida – Village Sadarpur

Noida – Village Salaarpur

Noida – Village Samasthpur

Noida – Village Shahdara

Noida – Village Shahpur Govardhan Baangar

Noida – Village Yaakootpur

The post Kirana Stores Near Me – Location-wise Contacts for Home Delivery appeared first on Growthonomy.

With the noticeable increase in Novel COVID-19 cases in the nation day by day, the Government is taking all necessary steps to bring the situation under control and eliminate all the mistakes that other nations have committed.

Several measures have been implemented like Janta Curfew followed by the complete lockdown for 21 days. Along with Section-144 implemented in several states to ensure that we see a drastic fall in the statistics of COVID-19.

While these policies have been implemented, still close to 2000 people have been identified as victims or prone to disease. All the services have been locked down expect a few essential services.

Doctors, Police, Social Activists and Media all are on their forefront in the battle to overcome this situation. These people without even thinking about their loved ones are putting their life in danger each day.

COVID 19 Relief Package announced by Government of India

Looking at the criticality of the situation our honorable Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister Smt. Niramla Sitharaman has recently announced a relief package to support the poor and needy under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana by sanctioning an amount of Rs 1.70 Lakh Crore.

The major aim behind this initiative is to make sure that there is proper management of food and other essential resources for the needy people during this time. And to ensure that there is no scarcity.

Honorable State Minister Shri Anurag Singh Thakur (Finance & Corporate Affairs), Shri Atanu Chakraborty, Secretary, (Department of Economic Affairs) and Shri Debashish Panda, Secretary, (Department of Financial Services) all were present during the announcement.

Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package is going to offer following benefits: —

1. Health and Life Insurance scheme for all health care workers helping overcome COVID-19 in Government Hospitals and Health Care Centers.

• Cleanliness staff, nurses, ward boys, ASHA workers, paramedics, technicians, doctors and specialists and all other health workers will be covered under a Special Insurance Scheme.
• Any health care professional, who during the treatment and identification phase of Covid-19 patients comes across with any accident, would be compensated under this scheme with an amount of Rs 50 lakh.
• All government health and wellness centers, along with Centre and State hospitals will be covered under this scheme. Providing insurance cover to approximately 22 lakh people involved in the services to fight and overcome this pandemic situation.

2. PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana

• To ensure that no person in need especially the poor people suffer with starvation due to the lack of food grains during the disruption in next three months. Government of India has come up with this step.
• Approximately two-third of the entire Indian population will be benefitted under this scheme and this service will be provided as an addition without any cost.
• The entitlement of each individual will be doubled during this entitlement period over next three months.

Pulses

• In order to ensure that there is no malnutrition due to lack of proteins, all the above mentioned individuals will be provided pulses according to regional preferences for next three months. i.e. 1 kg per family and that too absolutely free of cost by Government of India.

3. Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana

Benefits offered to the farmers

• Benefiting approximately 8.7 crore farmers of our nation, the first instalment of Rs 2,000 which is due in 2020-21 will be front-loaded and paid in the month of April 2020 under the PM KISAN Yojana.
• Cash transfers Under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana:

Help to Needy Women

• Under this MPJDY scheme, women account holders will receive an ex-gratia of Rs 500 per month for next 3 months. An approximate amount of Rs. 20.40 crores will be distributed under this scheme.
• Under this scheme, free LPG cylinders will be distributed done under this scheme, free of cost for next 3 months, to ensure 8 crore poor families do not face any problems during this pandemic situation.

Benefits to low wage earners in the organised sectors

• In order to prevent disruption in the services of low wage earners who earn less then Rs. 15000 per months in small business with less than 100 workers. The Government has proposed to pay 24% of their monthly wages for next 3 months in their PPF accounts.

Support offered to the senior citizens, Divyangs and Widows

• In order to overcome the difficulties during this pandemic, the Government will be offering Rs. 1000 per month over a period of next three months. As part of the COVID-19 Relief Package, this is expected to benefit approximately 3 crore aged people.

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act

• With Effect from 1^st April 2020 there would be an increase of Rs. 20 that will be done to the wages of the workers under MNREGA, that will annually provide a benefit of Rs.2000 to the workers and is expected to help approximately 13.62 crore families.

 4. Self-Help groups (SHG’s)

• Under this scheme free collateral lending limit will be doubled i.e. from 10 lakhs to 20 lakhs and will benefit approximately 6.85 crore households that are engaged through 63 lakh SHG’s (Self Help Groups).

5. Other Essential components offered under PM Garib Kalyan package

Organized sector

• During this Period EPFO’s (Employee Provident Fund Organizations) will amend their policies and benefit approximately 4 crore people registered under EPF. By allowing a non-refundable advance of 75% or three month wages whichever is higher.

Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Fund

• In order to support the building and construction workers i.e. approximately 3.5 core workers, this fund has been created under the central Government act to provide relief to these workers.

District Mineral Fund

• In order to support state government for screening, monitoring, medical testing and to further facilitate all other requirements in context to prevention and spread of COVID-19 pandemic along with treatment of the identified suspects, District Mineral Fund (DMF) can be utilized.

Apart from all these initiatives, the Government is strictly working to get the situation under control as soon as possible. By taking a step forward and learning from the mistakes of the others. Although there will be a huge hit on the economy, but it is certain that once we are able to overcome this pandemic situation, we will be able to quickly pull up the economy as well.

The post Government of India announces 1.7 Lakh Crore Relief Package for Fight against COVID-19 appeared first on Growthonomy.