The pandemic has laid a fillip to the e-commerce sales right from ordering groceries, essentials, and food, which also pushed the demand of bolstering the delivery and logistics services. Several small businesses and brands have pivoted online to build their independent online store to become direct-to-consumer brands. The increasing number of small businesses going online is paving demand for logistics service post- covid a majority of them now will be heavily dependent on the doorstep or last-mile delivery services.

Challenges in the last mile delivery for MSMEs and D2C companies

The D2C business counters several bottlenecks in the supply chain while being a new player in online commerce. Here are the most challenges faced by the businesses : 

Last-mile order tracking: It is cumbersome for small businesses to manage last-mile deliveries through multiple courier partners that also require customer care to be seamless and proactive.

Not catering to all geographic locations: Small businesses cannot do order fulfillment for demand coming from small towns and villages of India as their logistics partner does not service such remote areas, leaving those markets underserved and losing business opportunities.

Managing reverse logistics: Reverse logistics management is crucial for MSMEs to remain competitive and provide the best online shopping experience to customers. Most problems faced are during the pick-up point of the returns, as most delivery men are not available at the designated time slot.

To cater to the challenges faced by the small business and D2C in the supply chain, Ecom Express – a technology-enabled end-to-end logistics solution to provide for the e-commerce industry – has recently announced the launch of a self-sign-up portal called E-Zippie.

Nobody could ever imagine that a disease would lock people indoors for the longest possible time and eventually blur the lines between personal and professional lives. It will be wrong to deny that work from home does not provide comfort, but somehow in the cycle of office becoming home and home becoming office, our lives have reduced to a balance beam managing household chores and office work. And, in this conundrum, the wanderlust soul is lost and is yearning to pick the backpack again and escape to the foothills of Manali or feel the breeze of Goan beaches. 

For the well-being of employees, several corporates have allowed the work from home, but this long isolation from social life and the covid impact has created anxiety, low motivation levels and low employee morale. 

Against this backdrop, travellers are desperately looking for an escapade from boredom, that combines both work and vacation – a Workation and is the ultimate therapy for the body, mind and soul. 

What is Workation? 

Workation, as the name suggests, is taking your office along for the vacation. This looks like a bit of an oxymoron, but it is an emerging travel behavior that currently individuals are opting to work from a leisure location. 

An individual while working can attend meetings while enjoying the breathtaking views of the hills or ocean and without worrying about household chores. The maximum stay in the workation ranges from 1 week to 2 weeks. Destinations like  Goa, Jaipur, Shimla, Udaipur and Uttarakhand are the most preferred locations for workation stays. 

Fed up with being confined in the walls of the home for over a year, Indians certainly wanted an escape from their banal life to hills, beaches and nature hikes. What held them indoors to date was the arrival of the vaccines, after which they could think of travelling. As the numbers of the second covid wave began plateauing, the tourist destinations gradually opened from the prolonged lockdowns. With vaccination drives in full swing, people took their jabs, packed their bags, and took their heels off to Manali or to a destination of their choice as a part of ‘revenge travel’. 

Revenge travel is a behaviour that has recently emerged amongst the Indian tourists in the pandemic that involved overcrowding of tourist destinations. As a result of staying indoors for the longest time, the tourist spots began experiencing a huge influx of tourists, who desperately needed a vacation to get rid of their monotonous lives. According to Thomas Cook’s travel survey, 69 percent were keen to travel in 2021, 18 percent are ready to travel immediately post lockdown restrictions are lifted and 51 percent wanted to travel within 3-6 months. 

What is this ‘Revenge Travel’ emerging in Indians? 

The immense desire to venture out reached its peak with lockdowns that nudged people indoors. To quench the thirst of travelling Indian tourists are travelling out to explore some new remote locations nearby urban cities and also heading to small forests to breathe in some fresh air and feel connected to nature and family. As most people got bored of their daily routines, they ventured out together at the same time planning the same itinerary resulting in overcrowding.

It will be a distant memory now if we ask the last time you read a Premchand or narrated a story from the pages of Sukumar Roy or wrote a short story in your mother tongue. As globalisation and MNCs mushroomed in India it made the English language a bare essential to climb the corporate ladder. The foreign language has engulfed us to the extent that now it is enjoying mainstream status while leaving our vernacular languages neglected or forgotten. By saying, vernacular is neglected, we are not blaming English for it, but somehow, the sheer beauty of vernacular literature that it has been treasuring for years is gradually erasing from our minds in this fast-paced digital lifestyle.

However, with deeper internet penetration and accessibility, Indians today prefer to consume content in the language of their choice. A large fraction of semi-urban and rural India are strangers to English and are comfortable consuming content in vernacular languages. A recent report from Google titled ‘India for determined progress 2020’ stated that 50% of Google Discover users consumed content in Indian languages. The growing affection for vernacular is further confirmed by a joint report from Google and KPMG that found Indian language internet users to grow at a rate of 18 percent to reach 536 million by 2021. 

Blog platforms like Medium, WordPress or Blogspot lack the feature to write in Indian vernacular languages which prevents a large section of Indians to fully showcase their literature prowess in vernacular. There is no such platform to cater to the vernacular segment and has remained untapped for years. Here, an opportunity was realised by Ranjeet Pratap Singh, the founder hailing from Rae Bareli that envisioned him to build Pratilipi. He wanted to revive and build the vernacular literature culture on an online platform. Millions in India find comfort in reading and writing in their mother tongue. 

What is Pratilipi? 

Pratilipi, meaning copy in Sanskrit, is a self-publishing online storytelling platform founded in 2015 that caters to literature in regional languages. On this platform, the writers can upload their writings, which readers can enjoy. Pratilipi supports 12 languages: Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, English, Urdu, Punjabi and Odia.

The cascading effect of the second covid wave appears to be doomsday for the beauty businesses as they still grapple to revive the losses incurred from the first covid wave. The imposition of partial to full lockdowns in various states is translating to no in-store shopping at malls and shops, working from home, cancellation of weddings and festive occasions, no office parties and weekend getaways and a pause on non-essential products. This is creating a lesser headroom for sales and demand for the beauty businesses. 

However, the joint study report from Google, Kantar, and WPP titled ‘Connected Beauty Consumer report’ seems to bring a wavering light of hope for the Indian beauty businesses as it reveals that the Indian beauty & personal care industry is estimated to be a market worth $ 15.17 billion by 2024, from $ 9.98 billion in 2019, thanks to the shoppers leaning more towards online channels. 

The buyer’s affinity to purchase beauty products from online channels has ballooned up to 1.35 times during the pandemic as per a joint report by Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group. The report also says that at least 51 percent of the consumers will favour spending online out of which 43 percent of them will spend purchasing beauty products online. 

From In-store shoppers to online shoppers of beauty products 

Beauty treatments such as facials, waxing, hair spa, hair colouring, etc. require assistance from salons and beauty parlours. Since lockdowns have nudged the people to stay indoors, a majority of Indian consumers have no other option but to depend on digital and social media platforms to watch beauty tutorials and do-it-yourself (DIY) content. This is paving the way for the surge in online sales of beauty products. 

The Connected Beauty Consumer report says that 9 out of 10 beauty consumers sought help from the digital medium for advice, ideas and inspiration to purchase beauty products. YouTube is emerging to be a beauty advisor and search- as -a -discovery platform for beauty consumers. The survey conducted by the body finds that around 81 percent of the consumers engaged with beauty influencers and 26 percent of them bought the product after watching a video. 

Since uncertainty exists about the complete eradication of the virus and things returning to normalcy, the purchase of beauty products through online channels is anticipated to continue for the next 4-5 years.

If you want to sell handmade products online, or if you are a brick-and-mortar seller and want to add digital channels, there are some things you need to know regarding taxation and tax responsibilities before taking the digital step.

A simple answer to the question of whether or not internet businesses pay taxes is – yes. In India, internet-based companies and all types of online companies are required to pay taxes. Every business owner must understand the various taxes applicable to online sales and ensure that they have practical knowledge of the tax system.

Let’s take a denser look at the taxes applicable to internet-based businesses.