Hope all is well at your end and thank you for your continued support.
The team at Startup India Association (SIA) along with our Chairman wanted to wish you during this trying time. Many will disregard this email as another piece - we are also sick of the depressing news and jokes on our social media pages. Hope you will choose to read this as we think its different.
Thank you to the many that have decided to register with us recently. The team is working on our list. We apologize if you get this email multiple times - cleaning the list will take time but we wanted to send this communication.
Please take care of yourself and your family - remember the message about Oxygen Masks on Airplanes - 'Put the mask yourself before helping others'
Please follow Government and WHO advisories - if in India, we hope you are supporting the Janata Curfew today. It was great to see the support at 5pm for our health workers
This is a great time to take that well-deserved break, be with family - we have all seen the touching reports of people around the world motivating each other and health workers, performing for each other from a distance or on video chat. We found this picture of a video chat of a sermon to be especially funny !!
If your company has requested you to work from home, please dont take this as an opportunity to travel (specially with your family) - one of the reasons why this unfortunate spread happened in Europe
We hope this doesnt spread too much more and infections arent too serious. This is a great time to remind ourselves of a few things -
Our government's appeal to be prepared but not to panic - looks like "panic buying" will hurt our society more than the virus
If you are showing symptoms please wear a mask in public. All others dont need a mask - doctors are also saying this including the official publication by AIIMS. Lets not contribute to the hoarding of these products
This is a great time to spend with yourself and with family - repair some of the damage done by our focus on 'virtual socializing'
Older people are at more risk but younger people should also be careful since they can infect a lot of people - No harm in doing things like 'social distancing' and 'self quarantining'
We hope our member-base sees these things are not a sign of weakness (our team's weak attempt at translating one of the ads on TV these days ). Would love to hear from you about how you see this. Its about time a discussion is started on this - after all we are sick of the depressing news and jokes circulating on many media channels and our social networking platforms.
Startups are affected by the virus just like other businesses but they work with limited resources. Ofcourse we can help but this is about the health of you and your business.
A few of the tips/tricks we have heard to manage the situation -
brace your business for turbulent times - 'continuity plans' and 'Capital spending plans' arent only for large businesses. Suggest our member-base review the effect a drop in business activity and disruptions to your supply chain would have - we dont believe in blaming China but a diversified supply chain helps businesses of any size
along with your family you should also take care of your employees - many of our members have invested in insurance and sanitizers for the office
we keep repeating this - but this is a great time to spend with family and cut-out "non-essential" travel. A lot of companies have banned all travel. India has canceled visas and banned travel from some international destinations, Indian Railways is also battling the infection - our suggestion is to not travel at all (domestic or international)
good time to heed the advise of many investors - 'save your cash', 'reduce cash burn'. We (and our funding partner Venture Gurukool) are all too familiar with how difficult it is now to fund your operations. Few investor groups are still making deals but some members have even looked at taking bridge loans - suggest we dont learn the bad habit of reducing our cash burn by reducing headcount
we dont need to focus on talk about 'tough times to do ...'. remember this might be a great time to streamline your operations. many iconic companies like Sequoia, Google, Paypal, Airbnb were setup during difficult times. it is time to focus on building your profile as an innovator
pay special attention on your marketing spend - many companies have seen a decline in their customer lifetime value requiring a reduction in their acquisition costs
We get this very wrong. Darwin said - those who survive “are not the strongest or the most intelligent, but the most adaptable to change.”
). Would love to hear from you about how you see this. Its about time a discussion is started on this - after all we are sick of the depressing news and jokes circulating on many media channels and our social networking platforms.
