Rakesh Wadhwa:

As a result of this current pandemic, which product or service do you see vanishing?

 

George Day:

I don't see any obvious candidates for completely being obliterated. I'd say there will be major structural shifts. For example, I'm absolutely fast eliminated by the shift to online working. No. I think that as I'm reading the data, talking to senior leaders about what they're seeing is that they don't expect it to say it the same level but the shift to online working would be troubling to commercial real estate. It's very conceivable that the big commitment to large open spaces in skyscrapers in Mumbai or new Delhi will be a thing of the past. And we'll be doing much more remote work. There will be many more people who will come in periodically into the office rather than every day. Which will have enormous ramifications. I don't think we've really understood what the long term consequences will be. And that's why we do scenario planning because there's huge uncertainty around that. But I'd say, If I had one industry in mind this is going to be impacted adversely, it would surely be commercial real estate. But obviously the tourism, travel, airline sector is going to be struggling for a while. But the underlying desire of people to travel to explore and learn is going to continue to be there. So these will have to adjust dramatically and they'll have to watch and be ready to move quickly. Remember vigilant organizations tend to be more agile. They're structured with a team based organization and they don't have the high level of fixed costs which constrain them.

I'm seeing more companies doing outsourcing and using digital technologies to keep their fixed costs down.