Of the 32 million+ small businesses, nearly 25% are in danger of closing in the next 5 months. There are, however, a select few industries that are benefitting from this worldwide pandemic.

With large gatherings banned right now in most of the world and the majority of office closing, many people are working from their homes. Since these workers don’t have access to their office servers, they are using cloud computing to store and share their data with fellow employees. The cloud computing business is booming at the moment. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have seen incredible surges in usage in the past month. As with most technological adapting, people are unlikely to return to their old methods once they return to their physical offices. So the fast blossoming cloud computing industry has received a massive boost to its already fast-growing market.

Along a similar vein to cloud computing and storage is video conferencing and collaboration software. Again, because many places are under stay-at-home orders, people have needed to adapt their work practices. So in the case of replacing face-to-face meeting business people have turned to video conferencing. Companies like Zoom, Google Duo, Skype, and even Facetime have seen a massive surge in usage over the last several months. Zoom’s shares have increased 130% in value since the beginning of this year. But is this sustainable? Businesses will have to make sure that they continue to innovate. This even applies to successful businesses; if you stop evolving then your business will fail.

People being trapped at home has necessitated the usage of electronic payments for essentially everything they might want to buy. Credit card companies like Visa, MasterCard, and American Express have already been on the rise in the past decade or so with many people abandoning physical money. The CoViD-19 outbreak has only accelerated this trend. Many shops have moved to online-only interfaces and stores that have remained open are restricting physical cash usage due to contamination fears. Closely related is the upsurge in e-commerce. So many people are home right now, and they are getting more easily bored by the day. They have turned to buying products online to entertain themselves, which acts as a replacement for window shopping.

Probably some of the largest beneficiaries of CoViD-19 are the streaming, video, and gaming industries. People crave entertainment to stave off cabin fever. Parents want to entertain their children who have no school while they are trying to get work done from home. Adults need their fun too in the place of restaurants, theaters, beaches, holidays, bars, and concerts. Netflix was already incredibly popular and successful, but this pandemic has made their popularity skyrocket. YouTube has also seen an immense increase in foot traffic on their site. There are millions of hours of entertainment, and many people are turning to YouTube to get more information on anything pertaining to the virus.  Gaming has also seen its own surge in popularity, again because people are at home constantly and they are very, very bored. Xbox, PlayStation, and even Google Stadia are enjoying mass re-subscriptions to their services and a sharp increase in digital purchases.

Everyone needs groceries. In a time when people can’t safely go to the store to do their grocery shopping, many savvy stores are shifting into grocery delivery services. Along with grocery delivery, the demand for meal preparation delivery services and ready-made meal deliveries has skyrocketed recently.

So business owners- ask yourselves, “What can I do differently in my business so that I can profit now and after the pandemic is over?”