Looking back at moments from 2020 and plan for 2021

The year 2020 started just like any other year, our team was in the middle of our business plan exercises, were trying to ship out orders before the end of the financial year and overall we were looking forward to another great year. It was the month of March when we heard the news of COVID-19 entering India. By mid-march, the number of cases detected escalated and a nationwide lockdown was announced. From March till December, all of us have lived years that we never expected. We never expected that we would be in our homes for 9 months, businesses would be affected the way it did, and we may not see our friends and family who lived abroad for so long.

Looking back at this year we have a lot to be grateful for. We are very grateful for the relationships and new partners that we developed during this time. If it were not for the support of team members, suppliers, clients, and all our partners we would not be able to do as well as we have. Our team members were quickly able to adapt to this situation and work from home when duty called for it, some were happy about it than others.

2020 has been a year of experimentation. We cannot remember a time where we were forced to change so much as we did this year. In November 2019, the entire team moved from an IP based messaging system to Microsoft Teams.

People were not fully happy with this change but when the pandemic hit and we were forced to work from home this small technological adoption ended up making a world of influence. This application allowed us to have seamless video chats without team members and stay connected. We were able to have company-wide meetings every day, a practice that we continue to this date.

2020 also forced us to accelerate our digitization and we have adopted more technology this year than we have over the past several years. We completely revamped our SOPs and the way that we work. The way we market has also changed, the traditional reliance on face-to-face marketing at exhibitions and conferences has changed this year where digital marketing has become much more important. Exhibitions now have also become digital, could we imagine a digital a year or two ago?

Now that we say goodbye to 2020 and look forward to 2021, there are so many things to look forward to. First and foremost is the vaccine but secondly, we look forward to a world that thinks differently, where people are a lot more confident and comfortable with change. We look forward to seeing the people that we have worked with but have not interacted with for 6 months and almost over a year, and the people that we hired during the pandemic that we have never seen.

We look forward to a healthier world and not one that is paralyzed and frozen in place, we look forward to a healthy 2021. Let’s take a fresh start, list down newer resolutions, and refocus on our goal to make 2021 our year!