With the majority of companies worldwide taking the decision to permanently work from home, Indians seem to have taken a liking to this new working model. The Mavericks India report titled - “COVID-19 and Beyond: An Evolving Perspective”, based on a survey conducted with 720 respondents from across the country found that 54% love working from home, of which, 34% are willing to take a 10% salary cut to work from home indefinitely. 

This is in direct correlation to the amount of time people spent commuting to and from work in the pre-COVID scenario; 81% of the respondents with more than 90 minutes of one-way commute to the office would love to work from home permanently.

Work from home - a disruptive normal

56% of the respondents believe that their productivity levels have increased significantly since they began working from home due to the national lockdown in April 2020. In fact, the cohort witnessing the most notable productivity increase appears to be the senior executives and CXOs, of which 31% claimed a productivity increase of 25% or higher since pre-COVID times. 

Moreover, 39% of the CXO cohort would willingly take a 10% salary cut to work from home permanently, as compared to 18% junior executives.

    Strained relationship of trust with the media

95% of the respondents believe that the media has a significant impact on the democracy of the country. 

However, 82% feel that most media houses are biased and agenda driven, especially amongst 86% of the younger Gen Z respondents.

Content consumption patterns continue to change since the virus outbreak with a radical shift towards online platforms. Even among older generations, traditional forms of content consumption and news publications are losing traction while they gravitate towards popular news aggregators and social media channels.

The fast spread of fake news continues to be a burgeoning concern among the respondents - 100% believe that fake news has negatively impacted the country in some form or the other.

Anti-China, Pro-India sentiment on the rise

The anti-China sentiment has steadily gained momentum since April 2020 especially among the older millennial and Gen X cohort. 35% of those employed in the private sector believe that China is directly responsible for the pandemic outbreak and the consequent job losses that have taken place in the last 8 months. 

This growing sentiment has forced consumer brands to activate campaigns and alter their communications strategy towards going “Vocal for Local”. 

From an individual standpoint, 55% of the respondents have become supportive of the #VocalForLocal campaign during the crisis.

Survey Methodology

To arrive at these insights, Mavericks Research conducted a survey over the months of September-October 2020. 720 responses were collected via an online survey tool, and 180 respondents were entrepreneurs, CXOs or senior company executives.