Emerging Revenue Opportunities During COVID- Darrell D’souza

The pandemic has brought upon an undeniable dawn for businesses. With the worldwide shutdown, it became very difficult for businesses to run their operations and generate revenues. At Clientjoy Agency Summit, Darrell D’souza joined us for an enriching discussion powered by Payoneer on the topic ‘Emerging Revenue Opportunities During COVID’.

Darrell’s session helped us to vividly understand the impact caused by the pandemic and how businesses can sustain those changes to emerge out of these difficult times.

To further elaborate the discussion, Darrell talked about:

Risks In Revenue

Darrell stated that it is very important for business owners to understand risks. One should always learn from their mistakes and experiences and utilise those learnings for the betterment of their businesses. He talked about the following kinds of risks:

1. Liquidity Crunch:

Delayed payments and reduction in new business avenues has led the whole economy to fall prey to liquidity crisis. Cash conservation is becoming a top priority right now. Many businesses are struggling to operate and hence, are unable to pay salaries to their employees. Businesses and consumers are charged high interests on loans which are more difficult to obtain.

2. Absence Of Workforce:

The lockdown has affected the operations of almost all the businesses. The current situations are restricting us from carrying out day to day activities and hence becoming a hindrance in earning bread and butter. Manufacturing industries that need physical workers to be present on site have been affected largely. This has created a big risk in the economy from businesses and employee’s perspective.

3. Staying Relevant:

More than ever, businesses now need to pay heed to the question of relevance. This pandemic has shown us that nothing is certain and things could take a shift overnight. Business owners need to analyse if their business models would be able to withstand the shift of time and if they would still stay relevant post the COVID situation.

The session progressed with Darrell discussing more about how the pandemic will affect us largely and bring a shift in the revenue opportunities.

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Impact Of COVID On Businesses, Life And Beyond

To explain how the pandemic will affect the association of India globally, Darrell presented the geographic breakdown of export revenues:

We can see that the majority of IT services exports from India went to 3 main countries UK, US, and Europe. Now, as an after affect of the pandemic, people in these countries have started loosing their jobs. Revenue streams are being shut. There is an extremely high possibility the  that income for India will also see a shift. This situation might be worrisome but also has its’ own positive impact.

The companies abroad will now shift to digitalization and hence, geographical boundaries will no more act as a restriction. Sure, we had such opportunities before the pandemic, but the world is experiencing a surge in the same. They will start looking for ways to spend less and acquire more. This will broaden the chances of those companies looking out to associate with people outside their country. The Indian companies which can cater to this need, have great revenue opportunities. The same applies to freelancers and small companies.

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Adapting To The New Norm Of Digitalisation

We are left with no choice but to go digital. Currently, digitalisation has grown by leaps and bounds.
While discussing about the adaptability, Darrell talked about how his personal family physician also adopted online measures for advising his patients. Almost all kinds of activities are witnessing a shift.

The norm of digitalisation has now given rise to possibilities such as:

Are you worried about how to make sure that your business sustains? Thankfully, Darrell has helped us out with the way out. Let us have a look at:

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Importance Of Staying Relevant In A Post COVID World

Darrell said that “Sustainability of change is very important for businesses today”. When the world becomes vulnerable, businesses must display their abilities and try to overcome the challenges.

In order to grab more revenue opportunities, Darrell believes that all businesses need to analyse their business models and figure out if they are able to meet changing customer needs post the pandemic. Businesses should now be ready to evolve. The focus should not only be on meeting today’s needs but on ensuring that they meet tomorrow’s needs too.

Darrell presented the data of behaviour changes to tackle the current situation.
The image below shows us how more than 90% of B2Bs have transitioned to a virtual sales model during COVID-19.

This is also an example of businesses, changing their methods and adopting new ways in order to stay relevant.

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Upcoming Opportunities In A Post COVID World

Darrell provided his insights on the post COVID revenue opportunities for agencies, freelancers and MNCs. With the increased adoption of tools and practices mentioned below, doors to various opportunities will open up:

• E-learning tools.
• Smarter payments.
• E-commerce adoption.
• Remote Management.
• Data Analytics.
• iOT Tech
• Data light tools.
• Virtual bots.
• Machine learning.
• Secure transactions.
• Secure commerce.
• IVR.

Directory Of Platforms/Tools For Opportunities

About Darrell

Darrell currently manages Payoneer’s B2B business in the West. Prior to this, He led the food vertical for Paytm in Bangalore and also worked in Zomato as a strategic account manager. Working with unicorns has taught him the importance of urgency and frugality.  He has over 7 years of work experience. When he’s not in the office, You’ll find him on the road riding his motorcycle.

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Here Are Some Of Darrell’s Insights For Questions Asked By The Audience:

How to ask for payments from clients during Covid-19?

Darrell recommended that you try to figure out what your clients will be able to pay at that particular time.
Later, you can break down what is poured into several bits. Let’s say for example: If you need to take a hundred thousand dollars, you start by saying that for the first week we will work with maybe five to ten dollars and then, two weeks down the line we’ll take another fifteen to twenty and then we’ll try to break down the revenue and its inflow.

How do large companies implement new technology?

Darrell suggested that rather than growing horizontally you might want to try growing vertically. So let’s say for example: You have a web development agency and you had direct clients which were coming in from the United States.

Why not explore other markets at countries like Australia, like the UK, like even Africa.

Here, you are effectively using the same resources, you are making sure that you know there is no drastic change to their mindset but you are catering to completely new markets with the same set of individuals.

Also, if you’re a small agency catering to a smaller business and SMEs, this is a great time for you to start pitching to larger organisations as well and the reason being that that typically large organisations have been working with other larger agencies where obviously there are much higher margins and much higher costs. Now that those clients are becoming cost sensitive, they are looking at options that are more and more fruitful in nature. Not just in terms of the offering or the geography but also in terms of target market, there could be a sector out there that may be important or helpful.

What are the trends in 2020 for businesses adapting to payment gateways?

The product which has been tried and true for Darrell’s existing clients is the GPS solution of the global payment solution. A lot of business owners might not have credit cards or might not be using it. But they do have an existing business current accounts.

So, rather than use a traditional mode of payments collection, We provided our account holders with local collection accounts in respective countries. It is also much more convenient. They work on providing convince not just to their customers but to customers of their customers as well so that there’s a great payment experience over all.

Check out the detailed discussion and watch the full session:

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