In the 15 days since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, 471,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported globally.

The pandemic and consequent measures to stop its spread have taken a serious toll on the global economy. The cancellation of many big events, shutting down of commercial establishments, limitations on use of public transport, and employees having to work from home have crippled many industries. The tech industry, too, is seeing its share of ups and downs in these testing times.

The big five of tech – Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft have collectively lost over a trillion dollars in a month. Since the outbreak originated in China, iPhone supply issues have hit Apple hard right since the beginning of the year. Apple has also shuttered all its stores outside Greater China until the end of March. As many countries are forcing its people to lockdown, Amazon’s eCommerce business has come to a standstill. Businesses like Google and Facebook, which rely on ad revenues are usually the worst hit during slow times such as these.

Companies centred around the gig economy such as Uber, Ola, Zomato, and Airbnb too are struggling to get customers. Uber, especially, is hit hard as it has seen its stock plunge by 64% between mid-February and mid-March.

It is not an entirely grim situation though. Many experts believe that several tech companies are bound to come out looking better at the end of it all. The ones who will benefit the most from this situation are companies offering video conferencing and collaboration tools. While e-commerce services had almost come to a standstill for a while, some of them are resuming service at least for the essentials.

Zoom Video Communications has seen its stock surge 101% since January 31st. As an increasing number of companies started asking their employees to work from home, Zoom suddenly came into focus as an indispensable tool. The video conferencing and cloud meeting app is widely being used, not just by companies, but by educational institutes as well to hold classes and webinars. Similarly, Slack, Teams by Microsoft and RingCentral too have seen a spike in its users. RingCentral, especially, has picked a rapid userbase in China.

Many countries have put their populations in an obligatory lockdown to curb the spread of the virus. Unsurprisingly, Netflix, YouTube, and a slew of other similar media streaming sites across the world are seeing a spike in usage.

Certain experts also believe that most of the companies who’ve seen some losses in the midst of the pandemic will emerge stronger by the end of it. Google’s losses in ad revenue, for example, are balanced by its cloud computing revenues, which are in unprecedented demand. The same goes for Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud computing services. Apple, which used to rely heavily on device sales until a couple of years ago, has diversified into services such as Apple TV and iCloud off late. If the data is any indicator, people are watching more TV while quarantined at home, than ever before, and that must be good news for Apple in the long run.

Outside the direct effect of the COVID-19 outbreak, this episode holds the potential to create a more permanent behavior change in the way people shop and consume media. Consider online shopping in India, for example. Although online shopping for books and tech accessories was always popular with a section of internet users, online grocery shopping was still in its nascent stages. With the country in complete lockdown except for essential supplies, the demand for online grocery and medicine delivery portals saw a sudden rise. Google searches for ‘online grocery delivery’ saw a 60% rise in March 2020 in India.

The tech industry is not isolated in this time of crisis. The impact on other domains such as finance, travel, and logistic and supplies, which are directly or indirectly intertwined with the tech industry will affect tech companies by varying degrees. The outbreak and its fallout have taught us to be more self-connected, and aware and concerned about the diversity around us.

As the world will return to normalcy in the coming months, it will have converted some offline shoppers into online shoppers, some club-goers to Netflix bingers, and some on-premise employees to remote workers. As of now, the Covid-19 pandemic has put the tech industry through tumultuous times. And it will be a while until a clearer picture emerges, but as humans we will be a little more evolved and a little more learned after this incident. As individual, as well as organizational attitudes, change, some companies will come out looking better than ever before. And that will be the Future of Work, the Future of Human Race.

The world is in the middle of a crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading rapidly and the authorities and common people are doing all they can to beat the threat of a wider spread. One of the measures many companies already have, and many more increasingly are, beginning to take is to let their employees work from home.

While working from home isn’t entirely a new phenomenon, it has never been done on this scale. Many organizations have practised the remote working arrangement and are starting to figure out how to work from home, at least for the next little while.

There is a silver lining to all this though. Modern web tools allow you to go about your workday from home pretty much the same way as you do in an office. Here’s a curated list of apps that will help you be more productive and efficient while working from home.

CALENDLY

Calendly is a freemium tool that eases the stress of arranging and scheduling meetings.

Calendly lets you set your meetings and open your preferred slots for the same. You can share the link for this meeting with others. Once a requestor sets a meeting with you, the tool sends a notification to your email and places the scheduled meeting on your calendar and the requestor’s calendar.

Account is simple to set up, easy to use and generally very effective. It lets you integrate Google Drive, Office 365 and Outlook calendars to sync your schedules. Additionally, it also supports meeting tools such as Google Meet, Zoom, GoToMeeting, etc. to automate your entire scheduling process.

P.S. Calendly is supporting free integrations with video meeting tools, Zoom and GoToMeeting, up until June to help make connecting during the COVID-19 quarantine easier.

ZOOM

Zoom is a cloud-based web-conferencing software that lets you host meetings, webinars, lectures, etc. It brings cloud conferencing, online meeting, file sharing, and chat communication under a single umbrella.

With its ability to host 100 interactive video participants and 10,000 view-only attendees, Zoom is extremely helpful for mid-size and enterprise-level organizations. The app’s audio and video quality is top-notch, and it even supports dual-screen sharing. Furthermore, their meeting tools include remote access, screen sharing, annotation tools and file sharing.

Zoom is a freemium tool with a free basic plan that allows unlimited 1-on-1 meetings. It also has Pro, Business and Enterprise plans which support more users and carry more meeting features.

SLACK

Slack is a cloud-based project collaboration and team chat tool that powers many big organizations such as IBM, Vodafone, Fox Sports, Trivago, Lyft and Shopify. The free version of the tool allows you to send 10,000 messages and allows unlimited one-on-one voice and video calls.

Slack enables team members to chat one-on-one as well as a group. The app has public channels which let members across organizations converse together, while private one-on-one chats allow colleagues to chat and collaborate among themselves. Both public channels and private chat streams are supported by voice and video calls and file sharing.

From Google Drive, Outlook, Trello, Salesforce to WeTransfer, Hyde, Github’s chatbot, Slack supports nearly 150 apps.

TRELLO

Working from home means being based in different locations. Certain things come with working in a traditional office space such as immediate feedback, instant collaboration and real-time tracking. Trello makes it all possible even if everyone is not together in a central location.

Trello lets users arrange and assign tasks, track project progress and collaborate with their colleagues on to-do lists. The app’s easy-to-use interface, simple navigation, and drag-and-drop features make it ideal to be used as a shared tool among all members of a team.

The free version of Trello lets users create as many personal boards, cards, and lists as they want. The Business and Enterprise plans come with higher upgrades for the same.

PERDOO

Perdoo is an OKR (Objectives and Key Results) goal management platform for companies. The online platform lets team leaders align their employees with collective team goals.

OKR is a goal management framework popularized by Google, that helps companies implement a strategy. Perdoo lets team leaders communicate this strategy to their teams in real-time as the project progresses and align or realign employee efforts accordingly. Resultantly, executive team members also have a better overview of the project’s progress and what is expected of them.

The platform has a free starter pack that allows team leaders to add unlimited team members and create unlimited goals. There is also a premium version that generates visual graphs and custom reports on the goals’ progress.

SHEWORK.IN

SheWork is a platform that lets you hire best-in-the-industry female talent to work remotely on your projects. The platform that was devised to let women, who have taken a break to focus on family and children, continue their career, but on their own terms. SheWork lets women follow flexible work schedules to work on projects they’ve been hired for.

The platform hosts over 2000 pre-vetted profiles which go through a technical assessment test and personal interview with the technical HR. Moreover, it comes packed with tools for project management, progress tracking, scheduling, and chatting and file-sharing, which make life easier for both the talent and the hirer.

SheWork’s flexible plans make it an ideal choice for organizations of all size. If you are a start-up you can choose their start-up or pay as you go plans, larger companies with more requirements can go for the long-term plan or permanent hiring. There is something for everyone.

These are tough times and tough times call for tough measures. You may have to physically distance yourself from your work, but virtually these apps will make sure your remote workday moves along as it would even otherwise.