Sreedhar Saraswathi

After interacting with many organizations, I found that since April 2020 many organizations are struggling to justify their expenses on the real estate. With the occupancy levels less than 10-20%, it really doesn’t make sense. The big organizations that have deep pockets or the ones with most of their own buildings are able to sustain for a while hoping the magic vaccine will bring the normalcy back.

This has become a trillion dollar question that when will be the vaccine available? If available, will it be available to the general public at the costs that they can afford? Most important, how many people will opt for it before it is completely proven safe?

With the current situation, more and more people are opting to work from home and the organizations are also allowing/accepting and amending their business policies accordingly.

This is effecting the landscape of cities now. Most of the people are preferring their home towns to Work From Home instead of cities. More than 50% of rented houses in cities are vacated. Real estate is effected now. Technology Gaints announced that till July 2021 they don’t expect their employees to return to office. The others also have similar timelines. Some organizations are deciding to make permanent arrangements for people to work from home saving their CapEx costs.

There could be many hub spots that may come up in every corner of cities/towns with all saftey measures and technology to enable people to meet face to face without traveling much. The restuarant or business centers may change their seating designs & space management to accommodate this new requirement.

The entire Real Estate and Facilities Management business is also poised for a great shift. People who are working in these businesses have to think out of box to make their positions more relevant to the given situation. Technology, social dynamics, policies by politicians with far vision and economics will play a great role to make the new normalcy as a sustainable future.

Decentralised & distributable business will flourish. Fixed and centralized business may get effected. As per many experts, the expected time for normalcy from pandemic is next 2 years. The thing to note here is, meanwhile if organizations with growing technology & new business models find ways and means to continue the WFH (more economical) you may not see the same population coming back to cities.

On the other side, organization’s have to identify and invest on technology, infrastructure and innovative models that enable people to work from home without any hinderance. This may include a big shift in their IT policies. The government is also taking note of the situation and trying their best to amend the policies to align to the business dynamics.

So if you are in India, and you are planning to start a new business, you must align your vision and mission that focuses on the sustainable WFH models.

If you are planning to return to India, and if you have a good plan to reinvent your business model to accommodate this dynamic situation, this is the golden opportunity to be in India.

Jai Hind.

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