Crediwatch hosts webinar to assess the impact of COVID-19 crisis on Indian businesses

Bengaluru, April 29, 2020: Crediwatch, a Bangalore based TechFin company building AI/ML tools to help the financial services industry reduce credit risk, successfully conducted a webinar on April 28, 2020. Aimed at assessing the impact and analysing the risks of COVID-19 on Indian businesses, the webinar was addressed by Mr Ganapathy GR, Chief of Business and Strategy at Crediwatch; Mr Hemanth GC, Head of Product at Cr ediwatch; and Mr Rajaram BSR, Sr. Data Scientist at Crediwatch.

The hour-long webinar started with a broad conversation about the impact of coronavirus on businesses and economies around the world. The opening address, describing the various data analytics done by Crediwatch to assess the scenario, was presented by Mr Ganapathy GR. He also gave an outline on the effect of the pandemic and the consequent lockdown on the daily wage workers.

Speaking at the webinar, Mr. Ganapathy GR, Chief of Business and Strategy at Crediwatch, said, “Given this complex situation of epic proportions, Crediwatch’s approach would be to derive insights from various alternate datasets and forge a path ahead.”

This was followed by a data-driven discussion around the disruptions caused by the virus in the Indian business environment. As highlighted by Mr. Hemanth GC, India has seen a 55% drop in new company registrations since Jan 2020, 2% drop in employee count for BSE 100 entities, ~312% drop in new projects announcements between Feb and Mar ’20, and ~5% drop in Electricity consumption during the same period.

“Effective handling of the impact this crisis will have on us can only come from breakthrough product innovation and taking a fresh look at how we run our businesses”, added Mr. Hemanth GC, Head of Product at Crediwatch.

The webinar also focussed on the direct correlation between the scale of COVID-19 impact on a sector and the number of media mentions. Mr Hemanth GC listed out 5 sectors which indicate the worst pushdown with respect to media mentions:

1. Airlines, aviation, flights
2. Manufacturing
3. Energy, power generator, solar
4. Tourism
5. Mining, coal, minerals

Mr Rajaram BSR then talked about the pandemic’s impact on different sectors and classified them into three categories. i.e. high, medium and low-impact. Automobile, Tourism & Aviation, Real Estate, Manufacturing (Capital Goods), MSME, and Metals and Mining (Steel / Iron ore) fall under the first category. Financial Institutions (Banks & NBFCs), Agrochemical, Transport & Logistics, Textile & Apparel, Petrochemical, and Metal & Mining (Coal) are categorized as Medium-impact sectors. Finally, Telecom, Agriculture, Logistics & Warehousing, Power generation, IT, Manufacturing (FMCG) were declared as the least impacted sectors.

The discussions also forecasted estimated losses the Indian economy would suffer if the lockdown is extended further. According to Crediwatch’s analysis, listed entities would incur a fixed cost expense worth Rs 4,72,000 crores for a lockdown of 45 days, and this number rises to Rs 12,88,000  crores if the nationwide lockdown is imposed for 120 days. In terms of GDP growth, Crediwatch projects that India’s GDP may grow in FY 20-21 at a rate of 1.55% to 1.83% if the lockdown is lifted on 3rd May.  However, if the lockdown persists until May-end, the economy will experience a normal recovery quartering FY 20-21 at 0.9% to 1.02%.

The webinar concluded on a positive note, with discussions around how organizations can prepare for the post-COVID-19 future and gain competitiveness while dealing with borrowers, investors and supply chain partners. The panellists pointed out how the pandemic will pave the way for large-scale digitalization across the Indian business landscape. The last segment of the webinar included a Q&A session, wherein they answered the pressing questions from participants.

Sharing his insights, Mr Rajaram BSR, Sr. Data Scientist at Crediwatch, commented, “Pessimism isn’t the way through this pandemic, wherever possible, deriving and driving data insights is going to help us emerge stronger from the crisis.”