GBS online edition 1.0

As the world and the nation was being forced inside homes and buildings amidst a economic spiral spurred on by the Coronavirus, The Economic Times, via its largest and strongest thought-leadership platform on business & economy, The Global Business Summit, was already thinking of how to help companies move out of this rut.

India was losing $4.5 billion approximately in a single-day during that time.News on the economic outlook was also growing grim. The United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs had revised the growth rate globally to just 0.9% from 2.5%. Rating agency Moody hds given a similar forecast but with far serious outcome.

The Global Business Summit (GBS) decided to centre conversations around reimagining business during and a post Covid-19 world, in order to help businesses across industry segments to accept the Covid-19 situation as the new normal and slowly move towards normalcy and growth.

Eminent speakers such as Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy, India MD of Sequoia Capital Rajan Anandan and effective entrepreneurs such as OYO Rooms founder Ritesh Agarwal navigated these conversations,

Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys, said that India cannot continue to stay under lockdown conditions as more people will die from the resultant hunger problem. Murthy, also advised that lobby organisation for technology companies in India, Nasscom, could do an experiment looking to transition towards normalcy. The result of the experiment can be shared with the government to help take more efficient decisions.

He also urged that young entrepreneurs should look at this crisis as an opportunity to come out with products or solutions that will help the fight against the new virus at a mass level.

Businessmen duo and brothers, GP Hinduja and AP Hinduja, chairmen of the Hinduja Group, also touched upon the grim realities of the global economic situation and added that they were waiting for the government to provide a fiscal stimulus.

Speaking with a focus on India, the brothers pointed out the Indian government needs to change policies around the automobile sector and around stressed assets.

Some speakers also underlined the importance of marketing and how a new playbook is emerging due to the spread of the contagion. According to Harris Diamond, chairman and CEO of McCann Worldgroup, companies should not stop marketing during such black swan events but should be very cautious about it.

Oyo Rooms’ Ritesh Agarwal and other speakers pointed out that industry leaders need to start innovating around the new normal and use future technologies such as AI in order to outmanoeuvre the pandemic. Rajan Anandan, MD of Sequoia Capital, India, said that the country including the government has to help startups and SMEs a lot especially during this crisis period as they held the key to a quicker recovery.

The Summit was instrumental in helping identify the challenges and initiate a call to action to mitigate these issues across sectors in order to promote fast, equitab