DURBAN - While global markets are under strain due to the coronavirus outbreak, some businesses are proving to be resistant to the outbreak. Businesses like the video-conferencing service Zoom, live stream-workout company Peloton, sellers of products like N95 respirators, medical face-masks and sanitisation products are unexpectedly doing well during the outbreak.
Shares in Zoom are now worth almost double
what they were at the beginning of January. The video conferencing platform took a hit late last year, but the world’s sudden commitment to remote working has made the company more valuable than ever.
Delivery services are also seeing an uptick in business as people avoid shopping in person in favour of online ordering.The homebody economy, which includes technology companies like Netflix, are also on the rise.
Although still in it’s launch phase, BUSQR set up by South African musician John Savage, is the world’s first live donation solution. The site will allow musicians to sign up, sell tickets to live home-based performances, presumably streamed from a living room, and keep 95% of the profits.
In China, where citizens have been in lockdown for months already, the uplift that quarantine is having on entertain-yourself-at-home services is on the increase. TikTok usage
has skyrocketed; online games keep crashing because of the high demand
and Alibaba has built a system so people can buy groceries via live stream.
Besides entertainment and consumer goods companies, digital media companies also seem to be profiting. Workplace chat app Slack has also been booming with shares rising to 30.3 per cent in February, adding to the growing pile of evidence that remote working is Covid-19’s biggest beneficiary so far.
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