Startup Adaptation Through Pandemic: Not Only Surviving, But Thriving

This pandemic period is a difficult time for startups, without exception. Things that happen this time of year may be very different from what was previously planned. Like it or not, startups must rearrange their business plans and immediately adapt quickly. Agility is now the main key for startups to maintain their business.

This faster adaptation on the one hand is actually needed by various types of companies, especially business sectors that are directly affected by the pandemic such as tourism, retail, entertainment, as well food and beverages. Business people in this sector are now racing to adopt digital transformation, in order to stay connected with customers because their business has not fully recovered. In addition, the education and health sectors are also now using various digital solutions that have never been used before.

Through this adaptation, startups in any sector can also take advantage of the pandemic period to seek opportunities from partners and new consumers. New products or features that come from the startup adaptation process can be the main weapon for startups to maintain their business, especially if the innovations presented can answer new challenges that come after the pandemic. This new feature, can be present in the form of additions and service improvements or as a form of pivot to seek opportunities in previously unreached business areas. This opportunity is also supported by the increasing use of digital services by consumers in general. This new habit of interacting with digital services can also be used by startups to provide a digital experience of using their products and services.

However, act agile and moving fast is really just the first step. In the midst of a difficult situation, startups must also be able to find ways to make budget efficiency, look for new business opportunities, and ensure that their human resources continue to develop new skills. If these things are done well, the startup may not only survive, but also thrive in conditions new normal this.

Cloud as an Effective and Efficient Solution Create New Opportunities

It is also seen by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as challenges that startups can answer through their products. AWS enables its users to have the technology resources they need. One of them is that startups can use hundreds to thousands of servers in just minutes. Convenience cloud this can help startups looking to experiment with new ideas during this pandemic. Besides only needing to pay for features cloud used (pay-as-you-go), and if the trial of a new business idea fails, it can be canceled easily, without worrying about the risk of inflated expenses.

One of the Indonesian startups that responds to changing business conditions using a solution cloud from AWS is Halodoc. Example Halodoc, a healthtech startup responding to changing business conditions with AWS. During COVID-19, Halodoc in collaboration with more than 20 hospitals in Jabodetabek and Karawang, West Java. This collaboration allows users to order COVID-19 tests through the application.

Halodoc himself has used several AWS services, such as Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, and AWS Lambda. The results, so far Halodoc managed to save IT budget by 20-30%. These savings are obtained from the payment system pay-as-you-go that AWS has so they can budget for using the product cloud more effectively. Besides that, Halodoc also successfully launched a new application feature which is 30% faster than the previous version, thereby increasing the patient-physician response time in the application.

Participate in Helping Startups to Grow through Various Activities

Apart from its products and services, AWS is also actively involved in helping startups develop their businesses during this pandemic. Examples of courses online AWS Training and Certification, AWS Innovate conferences, AWS Builders Online Series, as well as a new acceleration program in collaboration with DailySocial.id, namely DSLaunchpad 2.0. Program DSLaunchpad 2.0 This is also one of the efforts of AWS and DailySocial.id to help startups in accelerating their ideas through mentoring with partners expert intensively for four full weeks.

By having a mindset agile, startups can adapt more quickly when changes occur that have an impact on their business. However, apart from using products that support agilityher, para founders must also be able to take advantage of opportunities to improve the capabilities of the team and its startup. So that startups can not only survive, but also continue to grow even though they have to go through many challenges during this pandemic.

Original article written by Gaurav Arora, Head of Startup Ecosystem, Asia Pacific-Japan, Amazon Web Services. Written in English, and translated and reprocessed by Ilham Sanjaya.