Work from home: Startups face infra bottlenecks

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 19

Work-from-home (WFH) culture has become a buzzword amid the Covid pandemic. Though most of the IT companies have embraced the culture gracefully, startups are facing challenges due to the lack of requisite infrastructure.

Every startup has its own set of problems. Small startups have to rework their businesses to sustain the work-from-home culture. Since they don’t have requisite infrastructure, it’s difficult for them to adopt new model efficiently — Sarvjeet Singh Virk, Founder, Finvasia

According to the region-based startups, employees working from home are grappling with Internet outages, broadband network limitations and cyber security issues.

The northern region, comprising Haryana, Chandigarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, has around 1,000 startups registered with Startup India. Out of this, 700 are in Haryana and mainly concentrated in Gurugram. A majority of the employees hail from tier-II, tier-III cities and villages.

In big cities, the net connectivity is good, but in smaller towns and villages, internet outages are rampant and a majority of the employees have to depend on mobile network, says the industry.

“Every startup has its own set of problems. Small startups have to rework their businesses to sustain the work-from-home culture. Since they don’t have requisite infrastructure, it’s difficult for them to adopt new culture efficiently,” said Sarvjeet Singh Virk, founder, Finvasia.

A technical analyst working with a Mohali-based startup said their teams were facing technical issues like accessing client data through virtual private network.

According to the industry, remote workers are more prone to data theft and malware attacks as most of the employees working in the startups work on their personal laptops which don’t have required cyber security software.

Also, networking ecosystem has gone for a toss as all conferences have been cancelled and they have to rely on virtual meetings.

Chandigarh Angels Network (CAN) in its report “The Entrepreneurs’ Perspective on Covid-19 and Business Environment” said even if the economy is revived and businesses are allowed to operate, over 55% participants in a survey predict a significantly changed work culture and 41% feel there will be a moderate change. “As per the survey, 80% entrepreneurs feel they can tackle such type of crisis in future more efficiently,” said Vineet Khurana of CAN.