Voice of London

Many industries have been postponed since the start of 2020, with some still struggling to stay afloat. However, is there light at the end of the tunnel?

According to the Financial Times, the pandemic has wiped £54bn from ‘British super-rich’s’ pocket in the past few months. Over half of the billionaires in the country have experienced loss as high as £6bn. While the world is working to get back on track, some industries are already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, profits wise. Most of these companies are likely to continue their success once the crisis is over.

When looking at industries that have been less affected by the pandemic, most of them fall under the tech industry. Some examples of this are, online meeting platforms, streaming services and online supermarket/food deliveries.

People are being encouraged to stay and work from home where possible. Due to the increase in free time, many have turned to online workout channels and learning apps to occupy their themselves with these apps experiencing a rise in popularity.

Jing Yee, a postgraduate university student, has found the lockdown an opportunity to make some money and help people out at the same time. He has been working for weeks to set up a website that provides exclusive discount services.

After a couple of months running, he saw a massive increase in his profit margin. Yee told Voice of London, “when I was setting up the website, I didn’t have any idea how this was going to go. Our website provides exclusive discount codes for many restaurants and supermarkets. Customers can also share the website to their social media pages and get an extra discount to certain restaurants. All the restaurants that we collaborated with are delivery available shops. In this way, we helped restaurants to gain more customers, and customers get their food delivered to them with a fairly low price.”

Yee continues, “after a couple of months, we started doing more discount codes, including clothing and cosmetics. Since then, our website started receiving advertisement requests. Some of them offered to pay almost 10k for a promotional space. We’ve made quite a lot profit from that and also started doing collaboration with many more shops. These shops give us discounts, and we provide them with more customers.”

“Despite this, the business didn’t contribute to the majority of my profit. I started a facial mask trade with some local shops since early March. This is what brings me lots of profit. I’ve got some connections in China to provide the medical masks to me.

Once I received all of the masks, I sold them all to local shops and donated some of them to the NHS. I have provided masks to many companies with over 1,000 employers. Safety is the key. I made sure all of the masks I received were reliable and efficient. This business is still going on. All of the bits and bobs I did during the pandemic made me a lot of money.”

He concluded, “being wealthy isn’t the end, it is just a start. I want to help more people and provide better services.”

Yee’s story is inspiring. When he was facing all the financial difficulty, he came up with a solution. There are so many industries set to see a boom when the pandemic is over. What people need to learn from the pandemic is not to panic, but to see what we can do to make it better.

Words: Ye Qiu | Subbing: Dina Nazari