How Vijay Eswaran and QI Group Weathered - and Overcame - Pandemic-Fueled Business Challenges

When all is said and done, the pandemic that began in 2020 is likely going to be one of the most studied and researched periods in global history. The combination of data collection and impact on social, political, and economic standards makes this a virtual certainty. For many businesses, the pandemic was an obituary — the final chapter for many companies that were on their way out as well as those that seemed to be on firm footing. All that’s left is the autopsy.

But for other enterprises, those that survived, the pandemic can be a study in adaptation. It can be a lesson in modern business practices, modern media for doing business, and a textbook on using technology to bridge gaps.

Vijay Eswaran, founder and executive chairman of Hong Kong headquartered QI Group, a multinational conglomerate with operations in more than 30 countries, has had his share of success. He founded the company that would evolve into the QI group, in 1998, just as the dot-com bubble burst and the business environment turned volatile. Despite the timing, with some smart choices, he and QI Group survived. And then flourished.

But as Eswaran is well aware, emergence from one set of complications doesn’t guarantee safe passage moving forward and avoidance of other impediments. After two decades of growth (with some mild recessions and financial crises mixed in), Eswaran and QI Group found themselves in a position that most businesses found themselves in during the early part of 2020: There was no precedent, no written path forward on how to deal with the fallout of the pandemic.

Shaken Up

In an interview in late November 2023 with a Malaysian news organization, Eswaran opened up about his mindset at the beginning of the pandemic. That mindset was, at first, confusion.

“To be absolutely frank with you, we were a bit shaken up,” he said. “We were majorly shaken up when the pandemic hit. We obviously didn't have a crystal ball and we couldn't tell how bad this was going to be, how long it would last. And initially we had a bit of a nosedive in terms of sales.”

Eswaran and his company were in a battle not against market forces or direct competition, but against a foe that couldn’t be negotiated with, couldn’t be swayed, and had no interest in overall economic well-being. Viruses don’t care.

With no blueprint to work with and no business plan for a global pandemic, adjustments were made on the fly in response to ever-evolving conditions.

“We became leaner and we became a little bit more cost-conscious and all of that,” Eswaran said. “We took all the steps that almost all major companies did. Having said that, we were fairly fortunate because we were in e-commerce, so we were in a space where business was done globally and hence the impact of the pandemic globally changed from country to country, region to region.”

That created a yo-yo scenario, depending on where the spread hit next.

“We were fairly surprised on how it rebounded for us,” he said. “Sales started going up. Because people couldn't go out to do what they could do, we became an automatic resource. And in fact, e-commerce took a bit of a climb during that period and we benefited from that.”

Any championship team will tell you that talent won out, that superior strategy was paramount. But what they also say is that good teams — and good businesses — take what the defense gives them. For QI Group, the defense gave them online commerce.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, online sales increased by 43% between 2019 (pre-pandemic for most of the world) and the end of 2020 (about nine months of pandemic-fueled buying online). As a number, that means sales increased from about $571 billion in 2019 to over $815 billion in 2020.

Not all industries were as lucky. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey reported that sales at gas stations fell by almost a billion dollars in 2020 compared to 2019. Sales at brick-and-mortar bookstores dropped from $8.9 billion to $6.2 billion.

Off the Ropes

Professional fighters hate facing opponents who are left-handed. It isn’t that lefties are that much more talented or vicious in the ring. It’s that, compared to 90% of the population, they fight backward. The novelty, fighters say, is what makes them difficult to engage. Even other lefties don’t like to fight lefties for the same reason.

The same could be said for the business environment during the pandemic. While a company like QI Group was perhaps fortunate that e-commerce became a lifeline for consumers and businesses, that doesn’t change the fact that virtually everything was in flux. Uncertain. Backward.

Eswaran said it wasn’t just about cutting costs or staff during lean times. They weren’t sure what times these were. Business died. Then it ramped up quickly again.

“So many of our departments had to get leaner, but on the other hand, there were other departments that had to be beefed up,” he said, illustrating the complexities of the changes involved. “There had to be people hired and more employees coming in because of the virtual nature of our business. And out of the pandemic grew some very powerful new economic and socioeconomic systems, if you like, but also new ways of doing business. We were virtual. We were doing conferences virtually. We actually had a conference with literally over 100,000 people online right across the world.”

If anything, that was the lesson Eswaran seemed to glean from the oddness of the pandemic. While recessions often sink the whole fleet, the pandemic was a boon for some — if they were able to adjust.

QI Group was able to adjust. And more.

“Adapt. Adjust. Accommodate,” Eswaran said. “These are values that I was taught very early in life. And at that particular point in time, they became my guiding force, so to speak. We have to learn fast to climb up to our feet.”

Part of that learning is how to take a punch, if you will.

“It's very possible in business that you get knocked down,” Eswaran said. “In fact, it's almost endemic that you get knocked down. But getting up again is the key. And the trick to that is simply being able to adapt, adjust, and accommodate. The more rigid you are in your thinking, in your operations, the more rigid you are in your strategy, the more difficult it is to break the pattern. So in a sense, we had to recreate the wheel. We had to start from scratch in many things that we needed to do. The pandemic taught us that nothing is forever and everything is open to change.