The start of the near calendar year marked new hope with vaccine rollouts and India looking strong with two in-house vaccine producers. The rate of infection was under control and we all thought that the worst was over.
Most of the business decisions involving change management which got deferred last year were looking to see the light of the day in early 2021. Our existing sites were planning for resumption and new sites were ready to be mobilized.
However, by the end of February, things changed dramatically and we all witnessed a sudden surge of infection with all the attention moving back to Covid, and this time due to a highly infectious variant the damage to life was massive.
Once again businesses were forced to roll back their unfolding plans. The spike was sharp but short and hence all held on to the plans and our client-facing teams ensured we never lost the plot.
As the cases started to recede, the focus was to inoculate the staff both at the site and in the offices as soon as possible. A massive campaign with the help of clients, our parent group Kalpataru, was undertaken on war footage to ensure we could mitigate the impact during the second wave and also minimize damage in case of reoccurrence.
By the end of May, the economic activity bounced back and overall, the sentiment and realization at the ground level have been encouraging.
We have been able to acquire many new client mandates and overall, the H1 of 2021 does not seem to be all that gloomy. There is a certain fear of wave 3, but we have ensured that more than 70% of our total workforce from 14k odd is vaccinated and ready to manage eventualities if any. Our order book is ready 200% of what we managed in FY '21 with overall revenues steadily rising 10-15% QoQ.
As per the experts, the next wave seems to be quite localized and with lesser intensity.
However, things will be cleared only once we wade through the upcoming festive season and re-opening of educational institutes. Hoping H2 will be even better than H1 with a key to follow Covid appropriate behavior and ensuring maximum vaccinations.
