Diversified portfolio helped DigiValet 'wane' Covid impact

At a time when businesses across sectors have been severely impacted due to the Covid-19, guest experience company DigiValet's Founder and CEO Rahul Salgia has said that diversification of business portfolios into hospitals and senior living facilities, apart from hospitality and hotels helped the company "wane" the impact of the pandemic faster than other businesses.

Salgia also said that the regional diversification of the company's operations across the globe also helped the company to wane the severe impact of the recent slowdown.

"Besides hotels we offer solutions to hospitals, to senior living facilities…we offer solutions to serviced residences. We also have a diversified portfolio across other verticals. So in fact we are seeing an upsurge in a lot of requests coming from hospitals because there are few groups which want to build more hospitals, build more capacity," the CEO told IANS.

"As we are diversified in our portfolio besides hospitality, we are able to wither (away) this situation better than few companies who are completely dependent on hospitality," he said.

Salgia was of the view that in the wake of the pandemic new investments would come into the healthcare segment, both from the government and the private sector and customer or patient experience solutions would also get major emphasis in the process.

He said that senior living is a major portfolio for the company and it is working on projects globally, including in London, which he says would be "game changing" in the senior living segment.

On the hospitality sector, which forms a major part of the company's clientele, the CEO of DigiValet said that hotels in India are far ahead compared to other sectors in terms of adoption of technologies for guest or customer engagement.

Talking of the outlook for the hospitality sector and hotels, which have been among the worst-hit businesses during the pandemic and lockdowns, he was optimistic and said that although weakness and subdued business would continue for next few months, it will not be long enough before things return to normal.

"As far as hospitality is concerned, because of travel being restricted, the business for hotels is certainly impacted and is likely to remain subdued for the coming few months….It is not going to be very long before things are going to get to normal or things would start getting restored."

Earlier this month, the guest-facing technology maker launched 'Thru', an end-to-end cloud-based solution for hotel guests to complete their entire check-in process effortlessly from their own device, without having to download any app or software.

According to the company, by facilitating check-ins remotely, from anywhere in the world, Thru eliminates all conventional touch points that the guests and hotel staff would otherwise be exposed to..