Startup Gortsa: An effort to avoid job loss in times of pandemic

By Reach Ladakh Correspondent Leh, Jan 04, 2022
Staffs of Gortsa working.
Leh :

In 2020 when the pandemic hit all across the globe, major companies were collapsing leaving their employees jobless. According to the OECD, COVID-19 was the worst job crisis since the Great Depression in history. Overland Escape which is a Travel Management Company based in Leh also stood still during these times. When the lockdown was officially announced all over India, the whole country shook with a wave of unemployment. Overland Escape held a total of 48 employees at the time and when a few months passed by without generating any profit, it became difficult to maintain their salaries. 
 
That is when the owner of the company stepped in with a proficient decision on his part that instead of losing his team members to the recession, he chose to venture into an opposite direction that aimed at generating more employment. Under the lockdown restrictions implemented by the government, it was becoming difficult for any official administration to meet their daily demands of groceries, medicines, fresh vegetables, etc. During such desperate times, Overland Escape delivered their essentials at their doorstep for free of cost. Doing so, it occurred that this delivery service could be turned into a profit-based service station which will eventually solve the irrevocable problem of possible unemployment of its team members. Hence, Gortsa was brought into existence and it did receive a very heartwarming welcome from the people of Leh. Gortsa turned into a resort when the team members needed it most by securing their mode of income. The reason behind the success of Gortsa was that people were unsure about their safety to go shopping for the fear of contracting infection thus Gortsa introduced a very safe mode of shopping for the people of Leh. Now the local population was able to lay back and shop for their daily essentials and fresh groceries just by clicking on their mobile phones. In this manner, Gortsa was able to improve people's lives during the harsh days of lockdown. 

With time it proved that Gortsa was a business venture that needed the hour and it helped in retaining all of its employees. Leh as a city was never able to sustain any suitable delivery serving stations of its own, some would appear during the summers to meet the growing demands caused by tourism, and eventually, those services would run dry during the winters and finally succumb to its end. Hence, nobody was willing to invest in such a fluctuating business but in 2020 Gortsa had turned this table because everyone was quarantined in their respective homes and there was a desperate need for a provision of delivery service functioning in and around Leh. Finally, when the SOP's were lowered and restrictions were lowered down, restaurants started to reappear and the food chains had a new demand to loop them within the set of networkings of Gortsa. Eventually more and more food joints and restaurants started to join Gortsa and finally it achieved its status of a full-grown delivery service station. At present, Gortsa serves as both; food delivery and order delivery station and it is growing by 20% each month. Every day the demands are growing, thus more essentials are made available at the store itself where people can visit and shop at the Gortsa arena. And during the bone-chilling winters, the prices of most of the essentials tend to go up due to the blocked roadways that cause an artificial deficit in supply. Traders make an unfair amount of profit out of such supply deficits by hiking tenfold on the standard price. Gortsa also aims at reducing such market monopolization and meeting people's needs at genuine pricing. Gortsa app remains functional for all the android users all over Leh and throughout the winter season. 
 
We plan to make Gortsa more accessible to our customers. Soon our app will also be launched on the iOs stores. We also plan to launch a wholesale market of our own that will aim at maintaining the quality and pricing in the market. Our sole aim is to be able to generate more and more employment, especially for the upcoming youths of Ladakh. Since the opening of Gortsa, it resulted in the addition of more team members on the board. Currently, the company is employing a total of 50 employees. In 2021, the tourism services resumed and yet the company decided to keep Gortsa as a functional unit because it shows a possibility of generating more job opportunities. After all, Gortsa has to keep up its fight against the raging unemployment.