No more ‘business as usual’

On March 24, 2021, a year to the day after the first lockdown was suddenly implemented, Uma from Upasana, a clothing unit, invited Auroville businesses to meet and learn from each other about how they had so far navigated the challenges of corona. Over half a dozen managers shared personal and business insights from pandemic times and how it had changed them and their companies. The participants were Bobby (Auromics), Kathy (Ecofemme), Uma (Upasana), Torkil (Prakrit), Clemens (Aurorarchana), Margarita (MG Ecoduties) and Aurelio (Svaram).

The event was introduced by Torkil, who noted that businesses have had sharply divided fortunes in corona time: units that produce items for indoor life (such as food, interior decoration and online living) have thrived; while businesses focussed on outside life (such as entertainment, restaurants and outdoor clothing) have been in low demand. He encouraged Auroville businesses to listen and learn from each other’s experiences.

Personal blessing

An unexpected and notable commonality was the number of presenters who began by sharing how positively-impacted they had been by the halting of normal life and having more free time. Bobby began her speech by saying that “The lockdown was one of the best times of my life. It was so nice to have these six weeks when you didn’t have to get up, with no workers waiting for you. I treat this lockdown as a blessing.” The first lockdown was “a welcome opportunity to stop, slow down and take a reflective break,” reflected Kathy. Uma mentioned that the lockdown “personally, was a spiritually high time and I am very grateful for that.”

Challenges and closures

The lack of income from sales, while they still had to pay outgoings like wages, was obviously a financial challenge for the units. Some of the participants said they contemplated closing their companies. Clemens was prepared to run for another month or two, and “June was a difficult time, a crunch time.” Bobby also noted that by the time it got to April,” I thought, wow, let’s close, let’s be locked down forever, the time has come. But I still had so many orders, and I realised it was not fair to the workers to close, and people wanted goods. So I decided to keep going.” However, she did have to close down her tailoring unit which employed six people because it was mainly supplying Mira Boutique in the Visitor’s Centre, which was shut for six or seven months. Uma realised that she had two choices; she could continue till her reserves ran out in July, or close down the production and tailoring side of her enterprise. She decided on the latter in order to save Upasana and, in what she termed her ‘hardest moment’, reduced a team of fifty to fifteen. 

Essential Services?

Officially, companies were not allowed to work during the six weeks of the first lockdown, but there were exemptions. Margarita of MG Ecoduties was called by the Tamil Nadu Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises in the first week of the lockdown, which suggested she apply for a pass to continue working as an ‘essential service’, because they recognised the value of her products in a time of heightened hygiene concerns. After one month, Ecofemme was told that sanitary products were considered essential items, so they were one of the first units to resume operations and receive income again.

Anxieties

April 2020 was a time of great uncertainty for many people, especially for local workers who had less economic ability to weather job loss or months with less pay. Kathy remembers that her biggest challenge as a manager was “trying to make sense of the uncertainty, with people in the unit who were all at sea with this situation and who didn’t know if their jobs were secure. The emotional toll of navigating people’s anxieties was something I found most stressful.” Clemens also noted that “psychological pressures were very high for everyone in the early corona time, not only for managers, but for workers as well. Even today, everyone is a little bit jittery. We talk to them but they have not yet full confidence that this is their home, which is what we want. Psychologically we are all a little bit in recovery.”

Successful

After the initial loss of six weeks of work and doubts about continuing, many businesses had some unexpectedly good business months. Clemens recounted that from August 2020 onwards, customers for his furniture antique business started coming back.” It was a blessing and surprise, and suddenly we were inundated with orders. Now we are in the nice situation of rejecting orders because we don’t have production capacity.” When they restarted in May 2020, Ecofemme had their best sales month ever. Due to receiving enough big international orders, Svaram was fortunate to not go into a crisis. MG Ecoduties had a very good 2020, just 6% down on their previous year, despite all the tumult. They started a new line of six skin care products, and looked at new markets, notably the pet care industry, eco hotels, urban laundromats and spiritual communities. Their offerings to the Auroville outlets PTDC and HERS increased 12% compared to 2019/20, even though they sold the items at a four rupee loss each.

e-commerce and online development

With one main exception, a common feature was that businesses became far more e-commerce and online-oriented after the first lockdown. Torkil, who is an economist, pointed out that e-commerce had accelerated all over the world during this time. This was true for Aurorarchana, who noticed that they had a lot more online sales. What was a novelty for Clemens was that “a lot of people in India who I have never met were placing orders. Normally you meet your customer.” All the Auromics hand-knitted clothing exports went to online retailers. The lockdown provided the time for Svaram to redesign their website and make it highly interactive and refined, and since then they have been receiving enquiries every day. While Margarita went into the lockdown planning to do e-commerce, she instead changed direction and focussed on B2B (business to business) retailing. Her company MG Ecoduties increased its aquaculture and composting production, the latter by 250% to 700,000 tonnes. As part of Ecofemme’s menstrual advocacy work, Kathy noticed that they were increasingly invited to speak to webinars in India and internationally.

Production

Whether to focus on production or not was a mixed issue for many of the businesses. Uma decided that Upasana can’t be a production unit and refined her business to focus on “creativity, our key asset.” Bobby on the other hand, ended up realising that “I love production. I sat down and noticed I am doing what I love to do, being a production unit.”

Workers

The relationship companies had with their employees was brought into sharp relief by the challenges of COVID and reduced income. Most of the companies still paid annual bonuses and some even paid full salaries in April 2020, with others paying 60% of the wages. Kathy felt the need “to pay more attention to the human dimension. Everybody went through a lot, with uncertainty and anxieties about personal health and jobs.” During the first lockdown when Svaram’s workers returned to their villages, Aurelio noticed that “they went back into traditional ways of food and preventive care.”

Even though the unit didn’t have enough work for the unskilled workers, Svaram committed to going on together and managed to sustain that. 

Reinvention

The lockdown became an opportunity for some businesses to radically restructure their work and for many to change from ‘business as usual’. Uma used the lockdown time to meditate on what the new Upasana would look like and how to be more relevant than before. Upasana’s home is now reborn as a ‘conscious living’ campus. “We went back to being creative,” Uma noted and focussed on collaborating with others, including Auroville Village Action Group which has production capacity. She realised that this fundamental change could only “happen because of Corona.” Aurelio took a leaf out of the concept of slow food and wondered what ‘slow business’ would look like and reflected that it was “very beautiful to slow down. The team enjoyed a bit more breathing space, so we had space for innovation, for us to be able to develop new things and think out of the box. Now we have a nice media studio running.” Torkil realised that there are times when it’s good to have to clean out a space and move somewhere new. He also realised that he “had grown his company out of passion: it was more a passion than a company, and there is a limit to how much my passion can grow a company.” Kathy became less inclined to push herself and her team, and realised that she could no longer work the conventional 9-5 and needed to take time and space for herself. As Ecofemme changes, she notices that “it still feels a bit loose, but the joy and productivity has not fallen back; if anything it has increased. We’ve become more relaxed as a result, and are trying to listen to what wants to happen rather than push on with an agenda.”

Auroville

The presenters also mused on Auroville’s reactions to the lockdown and future opportunities. Margarita wants to increase prosperity in Auroville and divert her bank accounts from outside banks to the Financial Service. The Auroville Board of Commerce (ABC) supported Auroville units with 44 lakhs of loans during the pandemic. Nearly all the loans requested were granted and are being repaid. The lockdown threw up a chance to look at ourselves anew, and in that spirit, Aurelio reflected on how well Auroville unites around challenges and wondered whether in the future Auroville could focus more on being an educational and design research hub.

As Auroville is intended to be an experiment dedicated to unending education, it was perhaps no surprise that the first lockdown brought learning in its wake, with life changes and units adapting to this newer world. The sense of something new being born beyond ‘business as usual’ was palpable, even if at times it was uncomfortable and difficult for those involved. And it began with the managers finding time to listen more to themselves.