The current atmosphere isn’t doing any good to major businesses, in fact most firms such as the airline industry might never pickup from where they were when we started having the so-called lockdowns. In theory, almost everyone has been affected at least except some unexpected service providers. At some point, with or without the current situation, we’ve all pictured someday when companies would explore technology to the core of their operations but not this soon.
In Kenya for example, we’ve seen companies such as the insurance sector turn to technology and offer medical consultation services to their customers via video conferencing, schools are turning to online classes at least to stay afloat while students are now more than ever crumpling to embrace technology. Private schools make up a sound number of affected institutions and the only way they could stay relevant is to offer online classes; remember, in some cases parents had already paid fees.
There are reports the so-called elite schools including Braeburn Schools, the Aga Khan Academy, Banda School, Cavina School, Premier Academy, Kenton School, Rusinga School and Sabis have reached an agreement with parents to charge fees for teaching students online. It’s a scenario nobody ever expected but times demand innovation like no other.
But in such horrendous circumstances, a few companies are reporting surges in the uptake of their services, the entertainment industry is particularly doing exceptionally well with streaming services like Netflix reporting more than thirty percent of subscriptions increase and internet service providers crumpling to meet increased traffic on their networks.
And we expect the trend to continue in the same direction at least until we’ve come out from the murky waters. As of the writing of this article, Netflix was hiring more than twenty thousand additional staff as customer care representatives to handle the surge in their service uptake and shares are almost going off the roofs for once.
We could also articulate some positive performance to the health sector especially firms involved in the manufacture of personal protective equipment’s as well as face masks but the impact is not as extensive as other sectors. Oil prices are plummeting in part because of the current situation and we expect power generation firms who rely on petrol to do exceptionally well.
Because everyone has to stay at home and not everywhere is covered by internet providers, the entertainment industry – in this case pay tv service providers like StarTimes and Gotv are beneficiaries of increased number of viewers looking for something beyond the available free to air channels.