Kaushik Shaparia, CEO of Deutsche Bank India shared his thoughts with the virtual audiences at TechHR India 2020. In his special address, the banking veteran touched upon the pain points of multiple sectors that have been hit by the COVID-19 crisis and he also highlighted why one should never let a good crisis go to waste. 

Shaparia mentioned that he was working from home before the lockdown started and the organization was doing the trials on the basis of their colleagues in other parts of Asia. He said, “95% of our employees are working from home and our clients are looking to us in a much deeper way and keeping their finances up to date.” 

He agreed that the impact of this crisis has deeply impacted the banking industry and the health of this industry is extremely important. Apart from the banking industry, other sectors are also impacted, and currently, we are in an unprecedented situation and we really need to wait for things to settle down. 

Highlighting the Indian context of the crisis the CEO said, “The growth has been tipped and we still haven’t seen flattening of the curve, we don’t know how do we react to the second wave while another part of the world has already gone ahead in flattening the curve.” 

This crisis took everyone by storm and companies were forced to shut down or layoff employees. The current situation is not good but Shaparia believes that the demands will be back for all the services in multiple industries in the coming 18 to 24 months.

This crisis has not impacted all the sectors in equal proportion in fact it has helped some of the sectors to overachieve their revenue target. Industries such as pharma, hygiene, and nutrition are doing well in the last few months. And going forward some of the industries such as automobiles will also thrive.  As people may reduce their dependency on public transport and switch to private vehicles is likely to help the auto industry. 

‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’

Talking about Atmanirbhar Bharat he said it is important to rely on ourselves to grow our business and entrepreneurs don’t grow their business only with our own money but we also have to borrow from international resources. 

Shaparia mentioned that one should not let the crisis go away and treat this as an opportunity. With the vocal for local call gearing up, we should boost domestic manufacturing. 

He said, “I will not raise questions about the intent of the government but there is a scope in implementation. We need to create an environment for attracting investment and review what we have done so far.”