We accept automation in our personal lives. So why are we so afraid of using it to optimize our companies? March 14, 2020 4 min readOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Automation makes 21st century life possible. Siri and Alexa help us schedule our days, adjust our thermostats, lock our doors and turn off our lights. Our cars park themselves and remind us when another vehicle is in a blind spot. We accept automation in our personal lives, so why are we so afraid of using it to optimize our companies? In a word: control. Entrepreneurs don’t…

Having initially brushed off the potential impact from coronavirus-linked claims, global insurers are waking up to the prospect of a double whammy – a sharp rise in payouts at a time of big investment losses. Because epidemics are excluded from many business insurance policies, the early prognosis was for a low levels of claims. But as recession threatens the global economy along with rising insolvencies, all sorts of companies with trade credit insurance, from airlines to retailers are coming under strain. Meanwhile, insurers’ investments are coming under pressure. They…

High volatility in gold prices have delivered a double-whammy to jewellers, with consumers staying away amid the coronavirus spread and reduced discretionary spending. While jewellery sales have virtually come to a standstill, the advance tax payments they have made has also put them under pressure. Prices continued to fall today even as the inauspicious period is expected to last for the next 10 days. Demand is likely to improve only next month. Jewellers have begun reducing inventories to avoid additional cost of handling. As against the level of 35-45 days of stocks held earlier, they are…

Here’s how companies and brands can create viral marketing content on platforms like TikTok. March 13, 2020 1 min readOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Thomas Ma, co-founder of Sapphire Apps Media, talks about how working at his mother’s nail salon taught him what it means to be an entrepreneur and how today’s social media platforms are being leveraged to create impactful content that goes viral.  Ma and The Playbook host David Meltzer share their thoughts on how to identify which trends are the important ones to follow, how brands are using emerging social media platforms like…

Every year, the professional wordsmiths and gatekeepers of various dictionaries announce their lists of new words deemed to be in sufficiently wide use as to warrant their blessing and inclusion. Among Merriam-Webster’s new words and phrases of 2019 were deep state and fatberg (a portmanteau of fat and iceberg, describing a large mass of fat and solid waste that collects in a sewer system). Gig economy, pain point, and haircut, in the business sense of an asset suffering a loss in value, also got in. I’d like to propose an alternate list: words that we should consider retiring. Not that…

The mutual fund (MF) investors got some respite on Friday, with the markets staging strong recovery. Over the last one-month period, major equity categories had seen sharp declines of 17-20 per cent with markets reeling from Coronavirus scare. Large-cap schemes have seen one-month negative returns of 20 per cent. Mid- and small-cap schemes have seen over 17 per cent hit on net asset values (NAVs) in same period. The above return scorecard is likely to improve after markets logged their largest-ever single-day recovery on Friday after falling as much as 10.8…

How to win over customers online. March 11, 2020 7 min readOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. As an entrepreneur trying to stay relevant and thrive in the competitive digital age, there’s one marketing strategy you’ve likely heard holds the secret to growing your business online: sales funnels. You’ve seen the ads, read the blogs, watched the tutorials and tried your hand at implementing sales funnels in your own business. But for some reason, you haven’t hit the jackpot. Scaling your business through sales funnels still feels like rocket science —and something is definitely broken. Related: 3…

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai) has advised all health insurance companies to provide medical cover for Coronavirus (COVID-19) in order to avoid any hardships with immediate effect. Irdai has issued guidelines regarding the same. The instructions are issued under the Provisions of Section 14 (2) of Irdai Act. “If coverage is granted for treatment of hospitalisation expenses, in order to alleviate hardships that may be caused to policyholders, all claims reported under coronavirus shall be handled,” the circular isssued by the insurance regulator noted. According…