Many white-collar workers are leaving crowded and costly cities to work from the comfort of their villages and hometowns in the wake of the pandemic.
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020 and IT companies decided on work from home (WFH), many thought the techies would continue to live in big cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad. They would simply set up their workstation at home. Instead, many of them decided to return to what they really considered home — their native places — even if it meant a village in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala or Tamil Nadu. This has created a situation where many of India’s tech giants are now being run by professionals living in distant villages.
People in villages are in diverse fields, especially in IT sector, medicine and film industry. It is altogether a different experience working from the village. Internet reach in the villages and no power outages (in some villages) have made it easy for some of them to work. Well, we can say that life has come full circle for some in the pandemic. They are back in their native village where they grew up and studied for almost 20 years. Almost all have moved out of metros and WFH. IT companies are also allowing virtual onboarding and working for freshers apart from experience professionals due to the pandemic. The WFH model comes with several benefits such as saving time in commuting, work-life balance, reduced expenses on housing, food and clothing, pollution-free environs, etc.
Meet Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho. He has built a company from rural India. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, SaaS company Zoho is also experimenting with 10 village offices across Tamil Nadu, where its staff will be able to access its feeder offices.
Without disclosing the name of the village, he tells that he teaches Math and Science at the village school. Once the class is over, the Zoho Corp founder sits under a tree, just like a farmer would do after tending to his crops.
The Zoho experiment
The experiment in Tamil Nadu villages was conceived after a recent survey was conducted in Zoho Corp. The company found that a little over 40 percent of its total employees — around 3,500 people — said they would like to work closer to their hometowns.
This nudged Sridhar to pursue his lifelong dream of moving his employees closer to their villages. Over the last two years, the founder set up a customer support centre in the town of Renigunta in Chittoor District, Andhra Pradesh. Its 120 member staff is from the local community, who live in villages and towns close to Renigunta.
With the coronavirus pandemic disrupting schools and offices, many of Zoho's employees working in Bengaluru and Chennai decided to move back to their hometowns. In fact, the company also encouraged its employees to move back home days before the nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, 2020.
Another startup, Vumonic Data lab’s team has been staying and working together at their CEO’s house in Tamil Nadu.
Although not everything is easy for example- many villages have powercuts so they have installed inverters or solar inverters. The lack of proper infrastructure and connectivity issues meant many were unable to cope with the prolonged working hours. Some professionals who intend to return to cities once offices resume are also contemplating shifting to villages permanently in the near future. While Covid-19 has resulted in more flexible and agile workplaces, we will need a robust digital network, infrastructure, technology adoption, education and empowerment at the village level to sustain the ‘work from village’ model in the long term.
On a workation
Work from Mountains (WFM) is an initiative between Sunshine Adventures and Travel The Himalayas, and is led by Panki Sood and Prashant Mathawan. The founders wanted to help people get away after being cooped up indoors due to the pandemic, and decided to provide them a chance to work from beautiful mountain regions.
So far, they have eight properties across Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and will keeping adding more as the demand goes up. One of the guests drove all the way from Hyderabad to Uttarakhand and is working from the mountains now. Not all the properties have wifi or broadband, though 4G coverage is good everywhere. Their monthly charges start from `35,000 per room for two people and one can stay here up to seven months.
There are other cheaper alternatives too. This is just one of the example where people are willing go leave the urban life for a much simpler place.
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Covid has really changed many life. Good content, keep it up.