A new strong world and an equally strong economy will emerge out of these difficult times

It cannot be denied that like many other fellow Indians, we also took a while to understand the details and effects of Covid-19. Despite being aware of the social distancing concept to avoid getting infected by Coronavirus, when we started getting information about the first few cases of infection in India, in the last week of February, it took us long to actually start implementing the same as it was a new epidemic in our lifetime.

In and around middle of March, when the news started spreading in the media as well as by the State and Central government officials, we got concerned about the 600-plus team members of the Siddha Family as well as thousands of our labourers working across all our sites.

Around the third week of March, we started getting a clear idea about the contagious nature of the virus and we immediately took precautions at our sites and offices with respect to washing hands and started using hand-sanitizers. However, till then, we were not sure about the closure of operations to maintain social distancing.

Around March 19, we got clarity that we need to be prepared for social distancing and hence on the same evening when our Prime Minister announced the self-imposed public curfew on Sunday, March 22, we took a decision to keep our Siddha team members away from office on Saturday March 21.

Being away from office from March 21, I was unsure and worried for the initial 7-10 days. I was finding the isolation very difficult to handle and felt that it was quite impractical. At the same time, I kept thinking how we could come out of it.

Around the first week of April, we started becoming confident that social distancing, if maintained cautiously, would result in minimal chances of being infected with Coronavirus. I also held a webinar via YouTube and gave a message to all my 600-plus team members, trying to instill confidence in them that they should not be worried regarding the current situation. They should stay at home, maintain social distancing and take all precautions as laid out by the medical practitioners and start thinking productively. I also gave them an assurance, that if we are cautious, then there is no possibility of us getting infected with the virus and if we are safe, then the country will be safe, because each one of us make the entire population of our country.

In those 7-8 days, I stopped thinking negatively about when this pandemic would come to an end and what the fate of business would be post Covid-19. All this while, I was spending time with my family at home, maintaining social distancing in case I had to go outside for any emergency and also advised my team accordingly.

After these further 7-8 days, while staying in isolation and at peace, I felt our organisation should start planning on how to re-start operations post the lockdown and not waste any further time and energy just thinking about the situation. I developed a strong belief that we need to fight-out these difficult times, as the livelihood of our team members, consisting of over 2500 people in their families as well as our commitment to over 5000 flat buyers for timely delivery of their flats have to be ensured.

During this period, I heard a lot of renowned people from various industries, including real estate, medical professionals, administrative heads of our state and the country along with various experts from their respective fields about what Coronavirus is, how we can save ourselves from Coronavirus, what the state of the economy would be like post lockdown and what the constraints will be and how we can come out of it.

Once I decided to involve myself into the future planning process of our company, I got in touch, using all digital platforms, with the core members of my team and the head of departments in my organisation. We uniformly agreed that we should immediately start preparing and planning on how to re-start operations post lockdown and spend the time in between on respective organizational work which would be productive to the company.

Since the last 10 days, we are working in full swing from home. We are dedicating at least 70 per cent of our time towards our work commitments and rest of the time for our family. Around 5-7 hours in a day is being utilised by every Siddha member in preparing our plans for business operations post lockdown. While doing this, we have kept in mind and reminding each of our team members, that we will have to abide by the directives of the state government in fighting out the virus and stop its spread.

Our engineering team has started closing the estimates, budgets, reconciliations and time plan for future businesses the day lockdown is lifted and how contractors are to be involved in the jobs. We have also made a standard operating procedure of our site work, where videos are being prepared to make our labourers aware about the precautions and processes, by which they will have to work post-lockdown. We are now preparing ourselves to fight and come out of the expected hardships that may face when work re-starts.

I believe that there would be three phases to this pandemic. Phase one is the ongoing lockdown period, whose timeline, according to me is unpredictable. This is the phase where we are planning and preparing ourselves in various verticals of our operations like engineering, marketing, customer service, legal etc. This is a phase where we have to maintain all rules and regulations to keep the number of affected people as low as possible and set a decline in new cases to end the lockdown.

Post the lockdown, we will get into Phase two where operations are expected to re-start in phases, as per the directives of the authorities, maintaining the guidelines and standard operating procedures as well as maintaining social distancing. I expect Phase two to last anywhere between three to six months from its start and it is going to be one of the most trying times in our lifetime. Despite so, I am optimistic and hopeful that Mother Nature will create every situation by bringing in ways & means to come out of this unforeseen threat.

While getting into Phase two, we have to prepare ourselves mentally about the financial hardships, availability of labour, difficulties to be faced by team members with respect to transportation facilities especially using public transportation and at the same time maintaining social distancing. We would need to ensure that neither we nor any member of the Siddha team gets infected by any way. If we are successful in overcoming this, we will get into Phase three, which I am pretty hopeful, is going to start on a positive note. A new strong world and an equally strong economy will emerge out of these difficult times.