The global spread of Covid-19 has given rise to a new kind of lockdown economy as businesses, individuals and governments try their best to fend off the virus and cope with its impact.
While countless companies across Asia and elsewhere are struggling to stay afloat and many people are losing jobs, the work-from-home phenomenon has benefitted some businesses -- and of course the digital platforms that help connect people.
For the millions stuck at home, technology is also making it easier for them to get nearly anything they need delivered to their door. They can even have a social life of sorts -- if they don't mind being on a screen.
Among the big beneficiaries of the lockdown economy is food delivery. Motorcycles and bicycles with food containers are zipping about cities as eateries unable to offer dine-in service pivot to delivery and take-out.
"I don't want to risk going out and putting myself and others in danger," said Witchaya Prasertsin, a 24-year-old Bangkok digital marketing executive who has been using food delivery services five days a week for almost a month now.
Food ordering patterns have also changed for Kornchanok Chomchoei because restaurants cannot offer dining in under state of emergency rules. "Before the pandemic and lockdowns, I ordered meals via apps two to three times a month, now it's two to three times a week," she told Asia Focus.
While few people are on the streets, drivers are exceptionally busy, including those working for GrabFood and Foodpanda as well as Singapore's Deliveroo. Others across the region are jumping on the bandwagon. The Philippine ride-hailing firm Angkas recently added food to its repertoire.
In Thailand, 7-Eleven is also offering deliveries through a smartphone app from 1,500 locations, expanding on a 100-store pilot project conducted in Bangkok in January. Operated by the Charoen Pokphand Group subsidiary CP All Plc, the convenience-store chain plans to eventually offer the service at all 11,000-plus locations and to hire 20,000 delivery personnel.
Kasikorn Research Center now projects the value of Thailand's meal and beverage delivery market will climb 17% to 40 billion baht in 2020, up from the previous forecast of 10% growth over 2019. "The spread of the new coronavirus will accelerate the growth of this market," a Kasikorn researcher said.
In Singapore, the government has introduced a "Food Delivery Booster Package" to help reduce the costs of food businesses serving digitally connected consumers. Under the programme, Enterprise Singapore absorbs five percentage points of commission fees charged by delivery platforms. The offer runs until May 4, when the current lockdown ends, but could last longer now that the lockdown has been extended until June 1.
The package is available for new entrants as well as restaurants that already have a presence on the platforms of Deliveroo, Foodpanda and GrabFood -- the city-state's three major players. If the current commission rate is 30%, the platforms will charge the restaurant 25% and receive the remainder from Enterprise Singapore.
"The demand for food delivery is expected to increase significantly, by as much as two to three times compared with previous months," Ted Tan, Enterprise Singapore's deputy chief executive, said in a statement. "This is also a good time for businesses to optimise their business models for online sales."
While declining to comment on business growth, Singapore-based Grab says it has committed S$40 million for different initiatives to assist drivers and merchants across the region, including financial assistance for driver-partners who are hospitalised or quarantined.
"We've channeled much our resources into bringing new merchants onto our platform, to help sustain their business and to provide consumers with more food options at different price points," a Grab spokesperson told Asia Focus by email.
These include reducing the maximum commission for GrabFood merchant-partners from 35% to 30% since April 1 and speeding up the processing of merchant applications, which exceed 2,000 daily, to 7-10 days. "Our immediate efforts are focused on how we can ensure the well-being and safety of everyone in our ecosystem," the spokesman added.
LIVE-STREAMING CRAZE
Another business benefitting from the lockdown is on-demand entertainment as people have more time to spend on their internet-connected devices at home. In Thailand, Kasikorn Research Center projects this could drive up the value of the on-demand entertainment market by 29% to 2.2 billion baht this year.
Web browsing and social media engagement increased by 70% and 61%, respectively, from normal levels between March 14 and 23, according to the London-based consulting firm Kantar.
Data from Apptopia and SimilarWeb indicated that Netflix tops all downloaded streaming apps globally with 59.1 million users. However, YouTube, the Google-owned video colossus, remains the world leader in revenue generation via mobile with in-app purchase revenues worth US$110 million.
Twitch, a leading video game streaming platform, also reported a 20% increase in traffic during March. TikTok, a mobile app popular among teenagers for short clips and lip-synced videos, already has 800 million active users worldwide and has seen a steady surge before and during the pandemic.
According to iResearch, short video platforms have seen a sharp increase in user activity -- to 105 minutes per day from 78 minutes at this time last year. And more than 70% of mobile reading app users have also been spending more time reading during the outbreak.
TikTok, owned by the Chinese social media giant ByteDance, has also seen its popularity increase for e-commerce to challenge bigger rivals such as Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo. ByteDance recently allowed businesses to open e-stores on TikTok, making it the fourth-largest e-commerce platform for Chinese merchants.
China's e-commerce market, based on estimates by eMarketer, has exploded and was worth more than $1.9 trillion last year. During the country's lockdown, the home delivery giant Meituan experienced around a 400% increase in online grocery sales while the online retailer JD.com saw orders of kitchenware and home fitness equipment increase dramatically.
Business is also poised to grow substantially in Southeast Asia as e-commerce still makes up only 2% of all retail transaction value in Thailand and Indonesia, compared with 23% in China and 7% in Japan.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, the e-commerce market in the region's top six economies was projected to quadruple from 2019 to 2025 to $153 billion, according to research by Google and others. Actual growth could outpace such projections as more Southeast Asians stay home.
Tech companies that provide teleworking and videoconferencing are also seeing significant increases in usage as remote work goes full-time. Microsoft Teams set a one-day record of 2.7 billion meeting minutes on March 31, up 200% from 900 million on March 16, as students and teachers in 175 countries are using platforms for education, according to a recent Microsoft report on remote work trends.
Since the platform can record meetings and stream live events, some companies are taking the opportunity to stage large-scale conferences and events that otherwise might have been cancelled. This has contributed to a five-fold rise in streamed videos per week in the last month, with hundreds of hours of video uploaded per minute.
Another teleworking service that has seen skyrocketing use is Zoom, which reported more than 200 million daily meeting participants in March.
Internet users don't turn to Zoom only for teleconferencing, they also use it as a new way to socialise, from meeting with friends and family to webinars and religious gatherings. Zoom has been the most downloaded application in the Apple and Android stores since February, according to App Annie, an app analytics platform.
However, Zoom has come under fire for privacy and security problems, which it is working to rectify. "Zoombombing" -- in which uninvited participants disrupt meetings by broadcasting shocking or even pornographic videos -- was one unwelcome intrusion. Singapore last month banned its use by schools as a result.
CEO Eric Yuan said the company had changed its default settings to prevent such incidents by requiring passwords to join meetings, and manual admittance from the host.
Online education has also been given a big boost as providers have been shifting their courses to online platforms. In China, around 80 educational companies offered free online courses to students during the Covid-19 crisis.
Thanks to its increasing popularity during the pandemic, the online education market in China is expected to grow 12.3% to 435.8 billion yuan ($61.5 billion) this year.
E-PAYMENTS SKYROCKET
With more people stuck at home but still needing to buy and pay for things, e-payment transactions are also on the rise. As well, retail traders in parts of Asia and Australia are increasingly refusing to handle cash amid fears that banknotes and coins could transmit the coronavirus, though it's not clear if it can be transmitted via paper notes.
The National Bank of Cambodia has urged consumers to use e-payment instead of cash to "help prevent and contain the spread of Covid-19". ABA, one of the country's largest banks, has encouraged people to pay bills and transfer funds via mobile services.
While cash still dominates many Asian economies, a 2019 study by the global consultancy McKinsey found that electronic payments in Asia are growing at around 15% a year, which is more than 2.5 times the average rate of economic growth.
The coronavirus outbreak could accelerate that switch away from cash if recent trends reported by payment service providers continue.
In Hong Kong, Octopus Cards saw transaction volumes risen by up to 30% in January and February from a year earlier. The company, which issues the plastic card that doubles as a public transport pass and e-wallet, said Octopus O! ePay Mastercard transactions at personal health stores were up by 40% alone in February, while the number of smaller shops joining the Octopus payment system had doubled.
The rival e-wallet operator TNG FinTech Group, meanwhile, reported a 50% increase of transaction volumes in Hong Kong in February. TNG founder Alex Kong expects volumes to surge by a further 35% in March as more people in the city "follow suit in limiting their contact with banknotes".
VietUnion Online Services Corporation, which runs Payoo, a prominent digital payment provider in Vietnam, has seen volumes expand by 10%. "Online transactions have been increasing faster than offline transactions as people limit traffic as a preventive measure," CEO Ngo Trung Linh told Nikkei Asian Review by email.
Dana, an Indonesian mobile wallet company backed by Alibaba Group's Ant Financial, has over 35 million users in Indonesia and reports an 11% increase in online transactions. "Payments of bills and phone credit purchases are becoming the most frequently used services," said CEO Vincent Iswara.
SCB Easy, the mobile app of Siam Commercial Bank, has seen 200,000 new users on its channel, bringing its total to 11 million, the bank said in early April. The number of its new users registered via Counter Service at 7-Eleven doubled to 10,000 accounts in just three days at the end of March.
"This service is convenient for customers wishing to open an SCB account without visiting an SCB branch," president Apiphan Charoennanusorn said in a statement.
He also said the rapidly growing figures reflected customers' readiness to embrace digital banking platforms as they realise the advantage of mobile banking at a time when people need to stay home as much as possible.
New registrations for PromptPay, the government-backed app, jumped by 20,000 in a few days following authorities' announcement of support for those economically hit by Covid-19.
The application has an average of 135 million transactions each month, of which 75% were fund transfers worth 528 billion baht in March. Charity donations via its donation feature to those affected by Covid-19 hit 50,000 transactions per day at the end of March, up 10 times from normal levels.
