SUMMARY
The platform is developed to protect people’s livelihoods and facilitate business continuity among others
WEF has invited enterprises and organisations to join the global public health response
The only response to stop the pandemic is taking concerted action, said WEF founder Klaus Schwab
In an attempt to curb the impact of Covid-19 globally, the World Economic Forum (WEF) along with the support of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched a coronavirus action platform to protect people’s livelihoods, facilitate business continuity and mobile support for the Covid-19 response.
The ‘Covid Action Platform’ has been developed to help businesses and industry stakeholders, including the governments, NGOs and educational institutes to integrate their efforts for unified action against global emergency.
Further, the platform invites enterprises and organisations to join the global public health response to Covid-19, by either leading the project or contributing to it through expertise, partnership, funding or other methods.
Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of WEF said that the only response to this pandemic relies on taking concerted action. This platform is at the centre of this mission, he added.
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO also said the private sector has an important role to play in combating this global health crisis through their expertise, innovation and resources.
Impact Of Covid-19 On The Indian Startup Ecosystem
The global pandemic has impacted businesses across the ecosystem, and India is no exception. There have already been over 60 confirmed cases of coronavirus reported in the country. While several startups and enterprises are keeping their businesses running despite the coronavirus outbreak, some are going beyond the work-from-home situation and creating contingency plans as well as business continuity processes to keep things operational.
Recently, Sequoia Capital issued a letter to founders about how to manage business better and plan for contingencies at the times of crisis.
Siddharth Pai, the founding partner of 3one4 Capital said that this is a wake-up call for startups to make sure that they have backup plans in place in case of uncertainties caused by Covid-19 outbreak. For instance, larger companies have made such plans for a long time, the burden is now on startups to create a clear roadmap to ensure the smooth operation of the business, Pai added.
