The last few weeks have been unsettling for people across the world because of the COVID-19 outbreak. With the virus spreading rapidly across the globe, the World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In view of the continually evolving global situation, here is a behind the scenes view of what we are doing at Myntra. We are clear about our commitment to the safety of our customers, employees and partners. And with this view we have activated our response teams, and put in place several health and safety measures to safeguard our employees, delivery personnel and our facilities against COVID-19.

Health and wellbeing of our employees is the priority. Hence, as part of our business continuity plan, we conducted a three-day trial of mandatory work from home for our employees. This was new for us as an organization, and we had to learn to collaborate virtually to meet our commitments to our customers. As we learnt new ways of working, we did share some laughs when kids joined some of our video calls, or doorbells rang in the background. After a successful pilot, we extended work from home for employees across our offices till March 20, 2020 to help maintain social distance and keep our people safe.

We were also quick to identify travel and large events as a risk, which led us to take the decision to completely restrict domestic as well as international business travel. We had to defer our much-awaited annual day celebrations much to everyone’s disappointment, but we did it in the interest of keeping our teams safe. In the coming days, we are encouraging our employees to have meetings using video/audio conferencing tools. We have also requested all employees who have recently returned from an international trip to self-quarantine themselves for 14 days at home and work remotely. In addition, since schools across the country have been closed, parents with young children can continue to work remotely as required to balance their commitments.

For our delivery personnel, we are organizing regular awareness sessions across all our facilities on how our employees and partners can minimize their exposure by following simple precautionary measures and maintaining personal hygiene. We have taken many measures such as placing sanitizers at our facilities, regular deep cleaning and sanitization, temperature screening for all employees and advising employees who have a cold or any flu-like symptoms to remain at home. We have stopped biometric attendance across our fulfillment centers and have reorganized the work space to ensure employees are working at a safe distance from each other. We are continuously keeping track of impacted areas across the country to minimize our delivery partners’ exposure.

As an organization, we are preparing ourselves, and wearing our oxygen masks first as we continue to deliver a world of awesome to our customers. We are also learning as an organization to collaborate virtually, manage in the face of uncertainty, and continue to meet our promises to our employees, customers and partners.