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COVID-19 pandemic which hit all over the world including Indonesia not only posed a threat but also provided opportunities for a number of business sectors. One of the big opportunities in the pandemic era is business sectors related to online and information technology, also known as IT.
Policy observer and strategic communication from Daegu University, South Korea, Prof. Gil H. Park assesses that online or information technology-based economic activities will play a more important role in the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic.
According to him the pandemic is not just a threat but an opportunity for the service sector to be more adaptable and transformed in the economic sector, and the government needs to help more business activities and information technology-based economies.
This needs to be done considering that information technology-based or online economic activities will play a more important role in the future.
The same opinion also came from the Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to South Korea Umar Hadi who said that online businesses, especially those in South Korea, would boom or increase.
According to Umar Hadi, in the aftermath of the pandemic crisis that engulfed the entire world of online businesses, they will experience very profitable moments.
Then what online businesses will be shot up and what factors support business growth that is expected to be even greater after the Covid-19 pandemic?
From e-commerce to edutech
The number of sectors in the online business, making business people who want to invest need to guess what online businesses that make up for in the era of COVID-19.
Entrepreneur and founder of Bahaso’s startup platform, Tyovan Ari Widagdo assessed that there are a number of startup business sectors that are likely to be popular and profitable in the current pandemic era, such as e-commerce, edutech, and health.
According to Tyovan, startup business sectors precisely because of this pandemic experienced a significant increase in business where online health platforms such as, Halodoc became popular because it helped the public who only wanted to consult and diagnose health online.
The e-commerce business is also a major need of the public to transact during this pandemic, given that the public is afraid to shop directly so that some purchases are made online through e-commerce platforms.
In addition to established national e-commerce business platforms, local e-commerce platforms are also popping up now, especially to meet basic needs. Young people in several cities create local e-commerce platforms to help the process of buying goods from consumers to the market.
Next there is the startup business Collaboration Tools such as the Zoom and GotoMeeting application which became popular in the COVID-19 pandemic era. Opportunities in this sector are taken by foreign companies considering that in Indonesia alone there are few or even no actors who take advantage of opportunities in the startup business of Collaboration Tools.
In addition, from the agriculture sector such as the TaniHub platform, it also became popular, then other startup businesses that were hockey in the Covid-19 era were education or edutech technology sectors such as Ruangguru, Zenius.
Tyovan said that it was now impossible for students to study at school due to the pandemic so they studied in their homes online.
The popularity of the edutech sector will not stop in the pandemic era, considering that business in this industry will continue to develop in a pandemic condition where people are forced to interact with technology.
Work from home becomes commonplace
One of the factors that made online businesses prosper in the pandemic era was the activity of working, studying, and worshiping from home or known as work from home (WFH) which is run by everyone in order to avoid infection.
Senior Services Office Director Colliers International Indonesia (property consultant), Bagus Adikusumo estimates that work patterns from home will become more common in its application by a number of company offices due to the impact of COVID-19, and is expected to continue after the pandemic can be handled.
According to him, if WFH continues for a long time due to the prolonged spread of the pandemic, then it will become a protocol run by a company to its employees.
In the future, WFH will become an attractive business model to continue so that there will be various adjustments to the company’s work patterns.
A similar sentiment was also conveyed by Indef’s Associate Economic Researcher Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat who considered that when viewed from the positive side, the COVID-19 pandemic had taught all parties to how to do online activities.
According to him, now everyone can learn and know how the work system, education and a number of business activities can be done online, including activities from home.
In the future there will be many people both in Indonesia and the world working and doing activities online, because the COVID-19 pandemic has opened up the insight that some activities including business can be made possible through digitalization
Forced to transform to online
Another factor that needs to be examined in relation to the booming online business in this is the deadly disease pandemic has succeeded in forcing traditional business people, such as MSMEs, traditional markets and food and beverage businesses to transform into the online realm.
Indef observer Andry Satrio assesses the pandemic itself has succeeded in accelerating and even forcing business transformation, especially food and drink and selling activities from traditional to online or online through the principle of digitalization.
According to Andry, currently all parties are forced to move online and apply the principle of digitalization, otherwise economic and business activities will die.
A concrete example, how the traditional market today inevitably has to be able to carry out the principle of delivery of goods after receiving orders online or via telephone, if you can not lose to other competitors.
Currently all buying and selling activities are carried out online and carry out the principle of delivery, especially for the restaurant sector and the food-beverage business is forced to run a business where orders can be done online.
None of this transformation could have been as fast as now after the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Supermarkets can now also order via social media applications such as Whatsapp. [antaranews/photo special]
