Kargo, a Jakarta-based logistics startup co-founded by veteran Uber Asia executive Tiger Fang, has raised $31 million to scale its business and help firms in the Southeast Asian nation fight the coronavirus.
Kargo takes some of the concepts behind Uber and applies them to trucking and logistics. That’s to say that business customers order trucks using a mobile app or website, but the scope is wider, said Fang. Unlike Uber, Kargo works with truck operators and 3PLs rather than truck drivers themselves.
For its Series A announcement, Kargo has an unusual pitch: It wants to help companies in Indonesia fight the coronavirus. The startup plans to do so with its newly formed $1 million relief fund for truckers, and through partnerships with several charitable organizations including Kita Bisa, PT Akar Indah Pratama, with whom it is working to deliver meals and essential medical supplies to healthcare workers and patients at multiple hospitals.
The startup said it is taking several precautions to keep drivers safe. This includes ensuring that all pit stops on its routes are well-stocked and properly disinfected. Kargo has also implemented an electronic proof of delivery mechanism on its platform to limit physical contact between users.
“Kargo pledges to be the most reliable logistics partner to ensure no disruptions to the supply chain of essential items in Indonesia. Our entire company is donating a portion of our salaries to this cause and we invite local businesses and organizations to get in touch so we can work this problem together,” said Fang.
“We’re grateful for our wonderful investors who continue to support us, even in a time of financial uncertainty,” he added.
Logistics remains a major opportunity in several South Asian markets as local shippers and transporters begin to slowly adopt technology to address infrastructure inefficiencies.
Kargo has already amassed more than 6,000 active shippers and a network of more than 50,000 trucks across the nation.
Emily de La Bruyère is co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a strategy consultancy focused on documenting the military, economic, and technological implications of China’s approach to global competition.
Nathan Picarsic
Contributor
Nathan Picarsic is co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a strategy consultancy focused on documenting the military, economic, and technological implications of China’s approach to global competition.
SpaceX has banned use of Zoom for remote operations. So have Google, Apple, NASA, and New York City schools. Earlier this week, the FBI warned about Zoom teleconferences and live classrooms being hacked by trolls; security experts warn that holes in the technology make user data vulnerable to exploitation. Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, has this week publicly admitted that he “messed up” on privacy and security.
But we are missing a larger question as we grapple with Zoom’s security flaws. Who controls the platform? Who benefits from it? Zoom received its seed funding from TSVC, which presents as a Los Altos-based venture capital firm but invests with the funds of a Chinese State-owned Enterprise, Tsinghua Holdings. Founded and run by a Chinese entrepreneur, Zoom’s mainline app is developed by China-based subsidiaries. Zoom servers in China appear also to be manufacturing its AES-128 encryption keys, including, as a Citizen Labs report documents, some used for meetings among North American participants. Beijing’s privacy laws likely obligate China-manufactured keys to be shared with Chinese authorities.
Zoom is precisely the kind of tool that Beijing values. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pursues a decades-long grand strategy to develop and capture global networks and platforms – with them to define global standards. Hold over standards promises enduring control of international resources, exchange, and information; a global geopolitical operating system with coercive might. Beijing has officially endorsed this ambition since its 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization, when it launched the National Standardization Strategy.
Now, the CCP is putting that intent into action. Beijing is about to launch China Standards 2035, an industrial plan to write international rules. China Standards 2035 is the successor to Made in China 2025; an even bolder plan for the subsequent decade premised not on governing where global goods are made, but on setting the standards that define production, exchange, and consumption.
Beijing completed two years of planning for China Standards 2035 at the beginning of March. The final strategy document is projected to be issued this year. While the specifics of China Standards 2035 have yet to be published, the intent – and focus areas – are already evident. The National Standardization Committee has released its preliminary report for the year ahead, the “Main Points of National Standardization Work in 2020.”
Our firm, Horizon Advisory, has translated and analyzed that report – and the past two years of planning that informed it. We find in it instructions to “seize the opportunity” that COVID-19 creates by proliferating China’s authoritarian information regime; to co-opt global industry by capturing the industrial Internet of Things; to define the next generation of information technology and biotechnology infrastructures; to export the social credit system – and Beijing’s larger litany of incentive-shaping platforms. We find an explicit global ambition that weaponizes commerce, capital, and cooperation.
As Beijing sees it, the world is on the verge of transformation. “Industry, technology, and innovation are developing rapidly,” explained Dai Hong, Director of the Second Department of Industrial Standards of China’s National Standardization Management Committee in 2018. “Global technical standards are still being formed. This grants China’s industry and standards the opportunity to surpass the world’s.”
Dai was speaking at the inauguration of China Standards 2035’s planning phase. He said that the plan would focus on “integrated circuits, virtual reality, smart health and retirement, 5G key components, the Internet of Things, information technology equipment interconnection, and solar photovoltaics.” Throughout, the emphasis would be on “internationalization” of Chinese standards.
Two years later, China Standards 2035’s initial research results reveal the concrete implications of those buzzwords. China Standards 2035 is to focus on setting standards in emerging industries: high-end equipment manufacturing, unmanned vehicles, additive manufacturing, new materials, the industrial internet, cyber security, new energy, the ecological industry. These align with the focus areas of the Strategic Emerging Industries initiative — also of Made in China 2025. Having secured its foothold in targeted physical spheres, Beijing is ready to define their rules.
DJI has a near monopoly over commercial drone systems. The National Standardization Administration is now intent on “formulating the international standards for ‘Classification of Civil Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ to help the domestic drone industry occupy the technical commanding heights.’”
Second, China Standards 2035 will accelerate Beijing’s proliferation of the virtual systems underlying, and connecting, those industries: the social credit system, the State-controlled National Transportation Logistics Platform (known as LOGINK), and medical and consumer good standards.
The plan’s third prong is internationalization. The Main Points outline the intent to “give full play to the organizational and coordinating roles of the Chinese National Committees of the International Standards Organization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).” Reports from the National Standardization Committee explain that giving “full play” means shaping “strategies, policies, and rules.” Beijing is to bolster internationalization through bilateral and regional standards-based partnerships – partnerships like China and Nepal’s standardization cooperation agreement, ASEAN’s standards docking, and nascent efforts with Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada, among others.
China’s standards plan stems from a clear, deliberate strategic progression. Beijing has spent the past two decades establishing influential footholds in multilateral bodies and targeted industrial areas. Now, it is using those footholds to set their rules – with them, to define the infrastructure of the future world. According to China’s strategic planning, this is what power means in a globalized era: “The strategic game among big powers is no longer limited to market scale competition or that for technological superiority. It is more about competition over system design and rule-making.”
But no one appears to be noticing China’s strategic positioning. Not much pops up when you Google China Standards 2035. That was a serious deficit before COVID-19’s global disaster. The stakes are higher now. Global shutdown has created what the CCP calls an opportunity to accelerate its strategic offensive. Our lock-down induced reliance on virtual connections has offered Beijing an unprecedented angle in.
As we grapple with the COVID-19 disaster, we need also to resist Beijing’s exploitation of it. We need to recognize the role of standards and the manner in which the CCP weaponizes them. We need to compete for alternative, safe, norm-based ones – and protect them from Beijing’s influence. Or we need to get used to security, privacy, ownership, freedom concerns far more serious than trolls at Zoom happy hour.
Tesla is now producing and selling the long-range rear-wheel-drive version of its Model 3 electric vehicle at its Shanghai factory, a month after receiving approval from the Chinese government.
The move might not be a milestone, but it’s notable because Tesla discontinued production of the long-range RWD Model 3 in the U.S. and now only offers that variant as a dual-motor all-wheel drive. It also marks a shift from Tesla’s initial plan to sell a more basic version of the Model 3 in China.
The company updated its China website showing the standard-range-plus model — the first vehicle produced at the Shanghai factory — as well as the long-range RWD and performance versions of the Model 3. Bloomberg was the first to report the change. The long-range RWD version starts at 366,550 yuan, or about $52,000 after incentives. Deliveries of the long-range RWD version are expected to begin in June.
The standard-range-plus model starts at 323,800 yuan, or about $46,000, before local subsidies.
The standard-range-plus Model 3 can travel 276 miles on a single charge, according to Tesla’s China website. The same website says the long-range RWD Model 3 has a range of 668 km, or 415 miles. Those range estimates are based on the New European Driving Cycle, a forgiving standard that Europe replaced several years ago with the WLTP. The real-word range is likely much lower.
Image Credits: Tesla/screenshot
Tesla started producing a standard-range-plus rear-wheel-drive version of the Model 3 at its Shanghai factory late last year. The first deliveries began in early January. The March approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology gave Tesla permission to add another variant to its Chinese portfolio.
Eventually, Tesla plans to manufacture the Model Y electric vehicle at the China factory.
More than six dozen startup founders, venture capitalists, and lobby groups in India have requested the government to grant them a “robust relief package” to help combat severe disruptions their businesses face due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In a joint letter to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, startups requested the government to bankroll 50% of their workforce’s salaries for six months, provide interest-free loans from banks, waive rent for three months, and offer tax benefits among other things.
“Unfortunately, our startup companies across the nation are inherently young, less resilient, and most vulnerable. Many of them face likely devastation during this extraordinary economic downturn. At this dire moment, Indian startups need a robust relief package from the government, lest all our collective efforts of the past few years are in vain,” they wrote in a joint letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi late last month.
Among those who have signed the letter include Mohit Bhatnagar, a managing director at Sequoia Capital, which is in advanced stages to close a fresh $1.3 billion fund for India and Southeast Asia, Gaurav Agarwal of online medicine store 1mg, Debjani Ghosh of industry body Nasscom, Karthik Reddy of Blume Ventures, Anand Lunia of India Quotient, Deepinder Goyal of Zomato, and Sriharsha Majety of Swiggy.
Some prominent startup founders and VCs including Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm, and Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo, have also held a meeting with Piyush Goyal, the commerce minister in India, for a similar relief.
“We seek your urgent intervention to help ensure India’s startup ecosystem survives this crisis to emerge as a pillar of growth, employment and innovation to help drive India’s recovery. We need the startup ecosystem to survive in order to help the economy bounce back. We have enclosed herewith our submission for your kind consideration and we look forward to your support in this regard,” the joint letter reads.
The request for bailout comes amid a national lockdown in India that has disrupted countless businesses. New Delhi ordered a 21-day lockdown last month in a bid to curtail the spread of Covid-19.
“Assumptions from bull market financings or even from a few weeks ago do not apply. Many investors will move away from thinking about ‘growth at all costs’ to ‘reasonable growth with a path to profitability.’ Adjust your business plan and messaging accordingly,” they said.
As India, where the economy growth has been slowing for several quarters, scrambles to provide for its 1.3 billion citizens, the letter has drawn some criticism from industry figures.
Disappointed to see many startup leaders & investors that I admire add their names to this shameful letter to the govt asking for bailouts – surely at this time the govt has more important things to worry about than pay “50% of salary bills & contract wage bills paid by startups”
“I can’t fathom how such a list gets made in a country of more than a billion people who are facing a crisis unlike any they’ve seen before. A significant majority of them daily wage earners who have no financial cushion or any idea where their next meal is going to come from. Let’s not even stray into health and the need for medical emergencies; just putting three square meals on the table a day is proving to be impossible for so many,” wrote Ashish K. Mishra in a column on The Morning Context.
“At this very moment, it is they who need the government’s support. Not fat cats with bloated, middling business models and venture capital funds whose begging bowls are now seemingly larger than their risk appetite,” he added.
Companies asking for a bailout is not limited to India. Oil giants have sought similar help from the U.S. President Donald Trump. But startups have largely been out of the picture. Brent Hoberman, chairman and co-founder of Founders Factory and Firstminute Capital, urged the UK government to provide some relief to startups last month. But the government has yet to do much about it, just ask Deliveroo, Graphcore and other big UK startups.
Sony said on Thursday that it is investing $400 million to secure a 4.98% stake in Chinese entertainment giant Bilibili.
10-year old Bilibili started as an animation site, but has expanded to other categories including e-sports, user-generated music videos, documentaries, and games. The service, which has amassed over 130 million users, has attracted several big investors over the years, including Chinese giants Tencent and Alibaba.
The announcement pushed Bilibili’s share up by 7.6% in pre-market trading. Sony has made the investment through its wholly-owned subsidiary Sony Corporation of America.
In a statement, Sony said the company believes China is a key strategic region in the entertainment business. BiliBili says it targets China’s Gen-Z. The vast majority of its users — about 80% — were born between 1990 and 2009.
The two companies have also agreed to pursue collaboration opportunities in the entertainment field in China, including animation and mobile game apps, they said.
You can read more about Bilibili’s business and dominance in China in my colleague Rita Liao’s piece here.
Yesterday, the FCC authorized a Google subsidiary, GU Holdings, to open a submarine fiber optic link between the U.S. and Taiwan, while continuing to block the company’s expansion of the cable to Hong Kong.
The cable, operated by Pacific Light Data Communication, has faced years of delays over its ties to the Chinese mainland. The Trump administration, through the Team Telecom review process, has placed an exacting magnifying glass on the deal structure and its operating processes, arguing that a direct link between Hong Kong and the U.S. would pose grave risks to the security of America’s internet infrastructure.
The original goal of the cable was to connect the U.S. to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, offering Google and other tech companies like Facebook the ability to move large quantities of information from their data centers domestically to the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region. That sort of bandwidth is even more acutely needed today in the context of the global pandemic of novel coronavirus and the rapid increase in work-from-home activities that are driving record internet usage.
Yet, when Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group bought a stake in the cable’s operating company in late 2017, concerns intensified among DC national security professionals that the cable could come under the sway of Beijing’s influence.
Those delays have proven costly for GU Holdings, which has argued in filings with the FCC that the project was increasingly non-viable given the extensive review process.
With today’s announcement, Google’s subsidiary has agreed to an extensive set of national security constraints on the project, including a moratorium on expansion to Hong Kong, extensive disclosure of the network’s operating processes to the U.S. federal government, and using security-cleared personnel in operating the cable.
In the government’s filing, the Team Telecom agencies, which include Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense, said that they “believe that in the current national security environment, there is a significant risk that the grant of a direct cable connection between the United States and Hong Kong would seriously jeopardize the national security and law enforcement interests of the United States.”
As part of the national security agreement, “Google will pursue diversification of interconnection points in Asia, including but not limited to Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. This diversification will include pursuing the establishment of network facilities that allow delivery of traffic on Google’s network as close as practicable to the traffic’s ultimate destination.” In other words, internet traffic will not be relayed through China or Hong Kong, which is a special administrative region of China.
The agreement will ultimately allow Google and other large tech companies to advance their interests in this important region, but it does underscore the increasing disintegration of the vision of one, global internet. Data sovereignty rules in Europe, India, China, and Russia are forcing tech companies to offer specialized cloud services tailored to each region’s privacy and censorship interests rather than offering one open and free infrastructure for global internet users.
According to GU Holdings’ filing, the U.S.-Taiwan segment of the cable is operationally ready, and will presumably start handling traffic in relatively short order.
Indian grocery startup BigBasket has raised $60 million as it scales its business in the country to meet growing demand from customers stuck at home.
Alibaba and other existing investors including Mirae Asset and CDC Group participated in the bridge-round, Vipul Parekh, co-founder of BigBasket, told TechCrunch in an interview. Parekh said the startup intends to close a larger financing round in the next six to nine months.
The eight-year-old startup, which attained the unicorn status last year, has raised about $720 million in venture capital and debt financing to date, according to CBInsights. Indian news outlet Entrackr first signaled about the bridge-round.
Parekh said the startup is aggressively trying to hire more delivery personnel to service the ever growing demand from customers. New Delhi ordered a nation-wide lockdown last month, which has disrupted several businesses.
The volume of orders on BigBasket has surged by up to five times in recent weeks, said Parekh. But the startup is struggling to find enough people to deliver items to customers as many workers have moved to their hometowns or are cautious about working in the current environment, he said.
In the last one week, BigBasket has partnered with Uber and two-wheeler mobility firm Rapido to deliver groceries in parts of India. The startup, like several others, faced severe challenges last month after the 21-day lockdown was enforced as it worked with local state authorities to continue its delivery operations. At one time, it had over 400,000 inventories that it needed to ship but was sitting in its warehouses.
BigBasket operates in more than two dozen cities in India and offers tens of thousands of grocery products to customers. As far as securing inventories is concerned, Parekh said the startup is currently not seeing any issues.
BigBasket’s rival, SoftBank -backed Grofers has also seen a surge in volume of orders. The startup said this week that it delivered in 1 million homes in three weeks.
But despite the growth, Grofers co-founder and chief executive Albinder Dhindsa said online grocery still accounts for only 0.2% of the overall retail market. “I think at the end of this crisis we will probably reach 0.5%, but that is still an insignificant share,” he said.
Several startups in India have expanded to grocery category in recent weeks to serve more customers and compensate for the hit their core businesses have taken in recent weeks.
Number of online #grocery delivery startups in India may cross #fintech for now
For years, people in the industry have been curious about Hotstar’s premium subscriber base to no luck. Best estimates suggested it had about 1.5 million to 2 million subscribers. Executives at rival firms have expected that figure to be lower.
In fact, a months-long analysis conducted by one streaming firm in India concluded recently that there were 2 million paying subscribers for music and video services. So 8 million is a huge milestone.
But ARPU that Disney is generating from those 8 million subscriber is far lower. Disney+ Hotstar is available in India for a yearly subscription cost of about $20. The service also offers a lower-cost tier that costs under $5.5 a year.
And for that $20 a year, subscribers of Disney+ Hotstar get access to a wide-range of catalog that includes access to Disney Originals in English as well as several local languages, live sporting events, dozens of TV channels, and thousands of movies and shows, including some sourced from HBO, Showtime, ABC and Fox that maintain syndication partnerships with the Indian streaming service.
“I think everyone is still trying to sort out the right pricing. It’s true the average Indian consumer is used to far lower prices and can’t afford more. However, we need to focus on the consumers likely to buy this, who have the requisite broadband access and income, etc,” Matthew Ball, former head of strategic planning for Amazon Studios, told TechCrunch in a recent conversation.
Disney+ competes with more than three dozen international and local players in India, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Times Internet’s MX Player (which has over 175 million monthly active users), Zee5, Apple TV+ and Alt Balaji, which has amassed over 27 million subscribers.
Most of these services monetize their viewers through ads, and have kept their monthly subscription price below $3.
Editor’s note:Our writer Rita’s journey from China to the US and back again was planned months before the coronavirus pandemic descended on the world. That descent ended up turning a simple trip home into a kind of epic journey. The changes in her location — which we reference, but do not dwell on, to help anchor the story — gave her a unique perspective on the changing landscape — and outlook — of the world as COVID-19 infections spread. We’re publishing a diary of that period here in part to relay some of that first-person perspective to you, our readers. It goes without saying, but the tech angles run throughout, as they are running throughout all of our lives right now (whether or not we “work” in tech). Apps connect us more than ever at a time when we can’t physically be together, and they are now a critical lever in getting things done. Governments scramble to use tech to track what’s happening — although surprisingly even what we think of as the most totalitarian efforts fall short in a crisis. And at the end of the day, the internet is where all our information is coming from. (IL)
Departing
On the night of March 13, before my flight from Philadelphia back to China, my Airbnb host stopped by my room to say goodbye. I was squeezing a stack of masks and a few bottles of hand sanitizer into my suitcase. They were the remaining stock of coronavirus protective items that I panic-bought in early February as soon as I landed in the U.S. As China’s production picked up speed, I gave away most of my supplies — which I had planned to bring back to my family in China — to friends and relatives in the U.S.
I had also asked my host, a slender, high-spirited botanist in her early fifties, whether she needed any supplies when I arrived at her house in early March. She gave a relaxed smile and said she wasn’t worried. There had barely been any cases in Philly, so there was no need. Plus, she had never worn a mask.
“People think you’re sick if you wear one,” she refused politely. “Why do people in Asia wear them?”
I explained that there’s a big debate on whether masks were necessary for the public. The consensus was that they were effective at preventing the transmission of COVID-19. Health officials in the West had for long recommended them only for patients or someone in contact with those who were sick, though the U.S. has recently moved to suggest mask-wearing for everyone in public.
In Asia, however, mask-wearing was a cultural norm even before the COVID-19 outbreak. Given the disease’s incubation period could be as long as 27 days, which meant many people could be unwitting carriers, wearing masks became an act of solidarity to protect others. Chinese cities had early on mandated mask-wearing in public. For me, they worked both as a placebo and a reminder not to touch my face.
Within a week’s time, the disease had advanced rapidly across the U.S., adding dozens of new cases in Philadelphia. All large events were suspended, and my host suffered from a handful of canceled stays.
I decided to ask her again whether she wanted any protective products. “Yes, that’d be great. I don’t have any sanitizers with me. No masks, either.” Her eyes lit up this time. “But how do you wear one?”
I handed her the items and realized that I was about to flee coronavirus for the second time. When I planned my visit to the U.S. a few months back, I had not the faintest idea it would spiral into two great escapes: first leaving China where the disease just began to spread, and later leaving the U.S. where a similar crisis was taking form.
Weeks 1-2: Fears in parallel worlds
I was getting restless when I left for the U.S. some 50 days ago. Objectively speaking, my chances of contracting COVID-19 were slim. I was previously in lightly-hit cities like Taipei (which was an early mover in putting effective control in place). And 99% of the passengers on my flight departing Hong Kong had masks on. But the sum of uncertain events triggered by the epidemic — from abrupt changes in border controls to canceled flights without notice — elevated my anxiety.
Things felt uncannily normal in Texas when I arrived. It was three weeks before the U.S. reported its first community transmission in late February. None of the screening I anticipated was present at immigration: no temperature checks or even questioning if I had been in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first coronavirus case appeared. I felt relieved and immediately chucked the mask I had worn on the plane. “It’s safe here,” I thought to myself, seeking solace in the sight of the bare-faced crowd, even though I knew my decision was largely prompted by the prejudice against masks in this part of the world.
My relaxation was short-lived. In fact, I would live the next eight weeks swinging between reason and paranoia.
The relatives and friends with whom I had planned to stay could no longer host me. Their employers, both of Asian descent, had introduced a new 14-day self-quarantine rule on staff who came into contact with visitors from China even though Texas had no such regulation.
Cleaning supplies at a Costco in Plano, Texas, were out of stock in early March when the entire state had just one COVID-19 case. The area has a sizable Asian population. / Photo: TechCrunch
Technically, I could roam free, but fears amongst the local Chinese community were too visible. The digital tools that kept the diaspora emotionally close to home also distanced them from their physical reality abroad. Consuming a flood of fearmongering posts on WeChat, many Chinese expatriates began hoarding household products long before the U.S. saw an outbreak. Chinatowns became ghost towns. My mother was shocked to learn only Asians were wearing masks and messaged me daily saying I should wear one and avoid crowds.
I followed only the latter advice — avoiding crowds — and voluntarily opted for 14-day social distancing, not because I was scared of getting infected but because I was paranoid about passing it onto others asymptomatically. My compulsive information seeking in hopes of better understanding the epidemic only reinforced my angst. No silence I had dealt with felt as unbearable as the isolation amid the immense uncertainties that coronavirus brought to all of humanity.
Weeks 2-5: Coming to terms
When I finally allowed myself to resume socializing two weeks later, I would disclose to people that I had recently been in China out of courtesy. The reactions I received were a mixed bag.
Most of my American friends expressed sympathy for China’s situation and were pleased I was in a safer place. A local dentist refused to see me until 21 days later — then the longest time for a patient to display COVID-19 symptoms — because he lived with someone who was frail. Some Chinese friends living in the U.S. jokingly congratulated me on my escape from the plague, which wasn’t my intention but I admitted I was lucky. A fifty-something Chinese acquaintance avoided shaking my hand and gingerly asked how long I had been in the U.S.
I tried not to be bothered by people’s hint of mistrust. After all, their response was driven by the human instinct to survive. Trust had also eroded with the spread of the epidemic in China, where neighbors avoided conversations and a person’s sneeze in the elevator would make others cringe. Though understandable, these small shifts in behavior could take a toll on social interaction and people’s mental health in the long run.
By then, I knew I probably had a clean bill of health. It helped that Texas was run on wheels and I could easily practice social distancing walking on empty, tree-lined streets. As my mind restored to peace, and I moved to Philadelphia for the second part of my U.S. trip, I began to devour the expanding trove of Chinese-language writings on the disease; they were perhaps one silver lining behind the dark virus cloud.
Trapped indoors, Chinese people were forced to contemplate difficult questions — though sometimes leading to unintended consequences like a rise in divorce cases. The unusual level of civic engagement and discussion sparked by the crisis provided some consolation. Stories of ordinary people fighting illness were vividly told by institutional and citizen journalists. The death of whistleblower Li Wenliang set off an unprecedented amount of anger on the internet. Another enthralling moment came when internet users rushed to preserve a censored interview using coded text.
The unusual, collective outcry against Chinese authorities soon gave way to a fragmented digital world. As China’s heavy-handed lockdown began to bear meaningful results, online users rushed to trumpet the country’s contingency plan. Others submerged in the more mindless activities of mobile gaming and video streaming to pass time. Meanwhile, schools and businesses moved to resume digitally with IT support touted by private tech firms.
Food delivery staff of China’s Meituan worked through the COVID-19 crisis to sustain society’s lifeblood. / Photo: Meituan
The offline world in China was also inching back to normalcy. Physical shops were allowed to reopen and restrictions on movement were being eased nationwide. People increasingly ventured out of their homes, taking masks off to sneak sips of fresh air when guards were out of sight.
For others, the daily routine hadn’t changed much, though life had become more precarious. While it was easy for high-earning professionals to attend virtual meetings and celebrate the remote working boom, those working in services, manufacturing and logistics had not been able to stay home but worked round the clock to sustain society’s lifeblood. They were also unlikely to have paid leave and many lacked employer-provided health insurance. As it turned out, this is just one manifestation of disparity exposed by the health crisis.
Week 6: The price of seeking safety
I knew China was on the horizon as soon as I arrived at my flight’s departure gate. The crowd was uniformly wearing some kind of a face protector. I hadn’t put one on yet. I had been adjusted to a maskless environment for weeks by then and it didn’t seem necessary to wear one during the layover in Chicago, where I cautiously kept a distance from others. There were barely any masked travelers at the airport other than the passengers en route to Hong Kong and Mainland China.
I put on one nonetheless in the spirit of solidarity. But others’ ammunition of protective equipment immediately put me to shame. Many donned surgical gloves, some in lab goggles and even plastic rain ponchos, disinfecting any surface their bodies touched. Drinking water with my mask dangling off one ear now felt transgressive, not to mention I broke a taboo by having in-flight meals.
More than impressed by people’s precautions, I was intrigued by the discrepancy in their access to masks. Paying exorbitant prices could secure the robust but scant N95 respirators. Most had the less expensive surgical masks, but even those became hard to find without connections to a supplier. A few wore the dubious varieties like the sponge mask, the washable cartoon cloth mask (I wore a Hello Kitty one to my elementary school during the 2002 SARS epidemic) and even DIY ones like a fashionable shawl.
Flights also became a microcosm of the disparity in protection: first-class cabin passengers were seated at a supposedly safe distance from one another, while the elbow-to-elbow economy travelers fretted the risk of flying amid an outbreak would outweigh the benefit of returning to what they perceived as a safer country.
Even getting a seat on the plane was a privilege. While airlines were suffering overall due to travel bans, demand could surge temporarily around major policy shifts. Following the W.H.O’s declaration that COVID-19 was a global pandemic, schools around the world moved classes online and shut dorms, prompting international students to go home. Flight tickets skyrocketed. Those who wanted to go home but couldn’t afford the price were stranded.
Week 7: Battling uncertainties
Health checks at a border checkpoint in China to prevent COVID-19 being brought back to the country. / Photo: TechCrunch
While our plane was traveling across the globe, my home city of Shenzhen announced expanded compulsory quarantine for arrivals from four to eight countries — adding the U.S. to the list — in an effort to contain imported cases as the epicenter of COVID-19 shifted overseas.
At 8 PM, the Shenzhen customs checkpoint resembled a hospital waiting room with a barely moving queue a few hundred meters long. Screenings were underway to detect coronavirus cases. The updated policy had not been officially announced, and many travelers were still expecting their family on the other side of the border. Impatience and confusion filled a hall that was lit by nauseating fluorescent lights. Will everyone be tested for the virus at the border or later at a quarantine base? Will foreigners receive the test for free? Will people have to pay for the quarantine?
Even the immigration staffers had few details. China’s containment measures were in flux just like the spread of the virus. The flood of inbound returnees was quickly squeezing the country’s medical resources and filling budget hotels repurposed as quarantine facilities.
At 1 AM, I was finally called upon for a temperature check. I filled out a dozen forms asking similar questions about my travel history and health condition, each going to a different government agency. I wondered why, with China’s alleged technological prowess, this grunt work hadn’t been digitized or streamlined. Are resources for public monitoring going into other areas the government prioritizes?
I felt exhausted, but not more than the customs officer examining me, who had been toiling away for more than 12 hours. Despite having full-body protection, he was unaware his mask had slid beneath his nose.
“When do you get to go home?” I asked. “Who knows? There are so many of you coming back. China can’t afford another outbreak. We have no choice but to work,” he said nonchalantly.
Once my paperwork was sorted, I proceeded to cross the border. China immediately welcomed me with a text message, reminding me to register with the public security bureau as location data from my telecoms carrier showed I had recently been in “epidemic-stricken” America. The virus outbreak was giving Beijing more reason to monitor individuals. The question was why, given the government already commanded abundant citizen data, it seemed to have struggled in their early efforts to track people traveling from Wuhan.
As @thisboyuan reminds me, that the gov’t is scrambling to track people’s movement during the epidemic shows what Beijing has put in place for a national surveillance system still has considerable limitations
I was placed in a group of 20 travelers, most of whom were overseas Chinese students, to wait for the shuttle that would take us to the quarantine hotel. We bonded quickly by grumbling about the surreal eight-hour border crossing, but no one was actually angry. Instead, there was an outpouring of genuine gratitude for frontline health and immigration workers.
Famished, one of us volunteered to put everyone in a WeChat group so we could order food delivery together. The WeChat group, aptly named “3.14 Quarantine”, turned out to be useful for trading information and supporting each other through the erratic quarantine period. A street-sweeping truck was humming at a distance. The clock struck 4 AM as our bus pulled up in front of the hotel.
Travelers arrived at a hotel in Shenzhen that had been repurposed as a quarantine base. / Photo: TechCrunch
Week 8: Embracing chaos
Adjusting to the Chinese time zone became virtually impossible as my day confined to the hotel room was punctuated by a string of sporadic events: temperature checks, meal deliveries, nucleic acid tests, phone calls from various government agencies, and transfers to new quarantine locations. One night, we were given half an hour to pack up and got on a bus that took us to the edge of Shenzhen. There we underwent a virus-detecting test, only to be transported back eight hours later, at 3 a.m., to another hotel in the same area where we had previously stayed.
My quarantine peers were growing impatient with the unpredictable circumstances and began calling any relevant phone number they could find. As we shared in our WeChat group snippets of information we had collected from hotel staff, local officials, relatives and friends, something became clear: The quarantine system was the result of mass mobilization and complex coordination between public and private organizations, ranging from health workers and the Communist Party’s base-level administrative organ (called neighborhood committees) through to government-subsidized hotels and residential complexes.
When policymakers imposed frequent changes, the players implementing them on the ground often ended up scrambling, leading to miscommunication and such counterproductive measures as shuffling us around in crowded buses. They were briefed only on their part of the job rather than the entire process, which remained opaque, so getting close to policymaking power was critical. Calling a relative who worked in the disease control department was probably more useful than asking a hotel staffer. Personal ties seemed to matter even more in China when one sought control in times of uncertainty.
Some of us with insider information learned how to game the system. Before being dispatched to quarantine bases, we had to self-report our household address, for each district government was in charge of quarantining its own returning residents. The more deep-pocketed district normally provided higher-standard lodging and food, a piece of information precious to desperate individuals fighting for marginally better treatment.
I fall into the camp of people embracing chaos, as trying to stay informed and in control over continually updated guidance from above could quickly make me cross the line into anxiety.
There is already an abundance of self-care tips floating around, but having outrun the coronavirus twice, I could at least attest to their efficacy: Pare down your information sources to one or two trustworthy outlets; stay physically active; call people; keep a sense of humor; take deep breaths and perhaps spare some time for a mindfulness talk. It’s better to reserve grit for any long-term changes caused by COVID-19, which are looking increasingly likely.
On the afternoon of March 29, staff from my neighborhood committee came knocking on my door. Clad in blue hazmat suits, they gave me a final temperature check and granted me a piece of paper declaring my completion of the quarantine. I immediately put on a mask and went downstairs.
Things seemed intact at first glance, but a closer look revealed subtle but long-lasting changes since I had left two months prior.
Everyone was wearing a mask — even drivers alone in their cars. Premises had temperature checks and sanitizers at the entrances. Many small restaurants looked deserted; the ones back in business had more food deliverymen waiting about than people dining in. War-like propaganda posters dotted the street, reminding people that the battle against the plague wasn’t over. The world would never be quite the same.
Oyo has placed thousands of employees on furloughs for up to three months in the U.S. and several other markets as the Indian budget lodging firm confronts the coronavirus outbreak that has cut its revenue and demand by over 50%.
The startup’s teams in the U.S. are most impacted by the furloughs, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a statement, Oyo confirmed the furloughs and added that India, its home market, was not impacted. The company also said it was not cutting any jobs.
In a video message to Oyo employees, founder and chief executive Ritesh Agarwal said the coronavirus outbreak has severely impacted its business globally. The company’s occupancy rate and revenues have dropped by “over” 50 to 60% since earlier this year, he said.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has disrupted nearly every business worldwide, is the latest setback for SoftBank, many of which portfolio startups including WeWork, Kabbage, OneWeb, have either furloughed employees or declared bankruptcy.
27-year-old Agarwal, who increased his stake at Oyo to about 33% last year after buying back stake from investors Lightspeed Partners and others, said the company’s balance sheet has “come under severe stress” and forced it to look at “every controllable cost and reduce them.”
“As part of which, every forward looking CAPEX, MNAs or even something as little as every non-essential travel and new expenditures were paused a little over a month back,” he said.
Agarwal is not taking any salary for rest of the year and others in the leadership team have agreed to have their salaries cut by a minimum of 25%.
India’s second most valued startup at $10 billion, Oyo has come under scrutiny in recent months after many of its hotel chain partners said the company had not held to its end of the deal.
Last month, Oyo said it was ending the practice of awarding perks such as guaranteed revenues to hotel partners around the world and was rolling out new contracts for its hotel partners.
“It is important for me and our leadership team that we make the right decisions required for the long-term success as well as what is right for the long-term cash runway for the company,” he said today.
The Indian startup will continue to engage with authorities worldwide to provide hotels to healthcare workers and others on the frontline to fight the coronavirus, he added.
