What does it mean to be Antifragile? Sectors that are booming despite Covid-19
Author: WenX CEO Jack Chia
During this lockdown period, the main question running in my head was how to make businesses more resilient in chaotic times. The term antifragility and the image of a hydra came to mind. Hydras are an ancient Greek mythical creature that regrows one of its many heads after one has been cut off. Antifragility is a property of systems that increase in capability to thrive as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, faults, attacks, or failures. It is a concept developed by Professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, Antifragile, and in technical papers.
Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better — Nassim Taleb
In his book, Professor Nassim, coins and uses the term antifragile for things that gain from disorder. He also realised that there was no antonym for the word fragility. He also described how “robustness” does not really apply as it is merely the ability to withstand disruption or shock, therefore he came up with the term “antifragility” — the ability to actually become better because of disruption.
Covid-19 has disrupted the way we live in ways that deep and far-reaching. This is the same for the business landscape, exposing vulnerabilities with immense financial stress on them. Businesses face problems from supply chain issues, lack of workforce due to lockdowns, and some worse, they are not allowed to operate. However, through all these gloom and doom some are exhibiting the antifragility trait. As an old Chinese proverb says “有危必有机”, loosely translated means “there are always opportunities even during times of crisis”.
Some industries have seized this opportunity and have done really well. In no particular order I am listing them down as below, also it will be based on my observations here in South East Asia (SEA).
Food delivery
In recent weeks, the most obvious business thriving is food delivery platforms. Most have registered a tremendous increase in orders due to the fact that we still need to eat. Eating some nice food during the lockdown as a way to decrease the boredom some face I guess. In SEA, famous food platforms include Foodpanda, Deliveroo, Grabfood and etc. In Singapore, the average increase of orders was reported to increase around 20%, and its set to increase when stricter movement controls set in on the 6th April 2020.
Grab and Gojek which previously focused on rides are now “regrowing” and focusing on a new head as per the hydra after the ride business side has taken a sharp decline. Their agility to shift focus from one source to another source will be vital for the survival of the company in the long term. In Vietnam, the food delivery and application for drivers have increased on average 24% and 50% respectively.
Restaurants are coming up with creative ways to survive this, for example, Restaurant Ibid helmed by Woo Wai Leong ( In September 2019, Restaurant Ibid was listed in the Michelin Guide Singapore 2019, making it the only restaurant in the world run by an amateur MasterChef contestant to be included in the guide), they have quickly launched an initiative to do deliveries and bakery.
Previously, famous for their dinner tasting menus are now coming up with yummy treats for the tummy during this lockdown period.
While in Malaysia myBurgerLab was reported to have 95% of its sales coming from delivery. Others in the industry who are as fast enough to change have re-purposed their kitchens to do food catering supplying affordable and delicious meals as a means of survival instead of lamenting on the loss of customers.
This trend I am positive that it echoes in other parts of the world as well.
Hypermarkets, Supermarkets, and Online shopping
Internationally, we have heard about Amazon's online sales increased during this period, while here in SEA, Lazada, Shoppee, Qoo10 all have seen an increase in their sales during this period. This could be due to the increase in demand for people adverse to going out shopping practicing social distancing. Another reason was due to the surge in demand for sanitizers and face masks for which most people did not know where to get these. It's relatively safer to buy from reputable online platforms as I have also read of a lot of scams recently involving P2P sales of such items.
Alas, who can forget the scenes in Singapore supermarkets of people stocking up and clearing all essential food? I’m sure everyone will agree that hypermarkets and grocery chains are the biggest winners of all — Fair Price, Aeons, Giants, and Tescos of the world. This phenomenon was echoed all the way from Australia to the Middle East, where people were just stocking up on everything including the infamous toilet paper rolls (currently trending memes).
In Vietnam, supermarket chain like Aeon has partnered with Grab to provide fast delivery services for groceries. Online stores of supermarket chains have increased traffic of an average of 800% during the period compared to the same period last year according to a report quoting Google Analytics. While foot traffic might have fallen overall business figures have increased in the short term.
Tele-conferencing apps
This sector already booming due to the increased globalization of business received another significant boost during this period. Zoom was reported to be download 27 million times in March amidst reports of vulnerabilities that hackers being able to get windows passwords exploiting a loophole in the system. Compared to 2.1 million downloads in January, this is 13X in 2 months and if it was a token it would be a pretty nice pump.
Tencent online meetings have been hot with millions of daily users since January when Covid-19 cause the lockdown in major cities in China. Not forgetting working performance apps DingTalk by Alibaba group just following in close pursuit. Their international rival, Slack by Microsoft increased to 44 million daily users from 32 million for the month of March. Other communication apps like Skype and the new coming Houseparty are also gaining more market share.
Other social apps such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok all have reported a surge of a minimum average of 3X in their daily active users.
Creative staying users such as the Bass Agents also recently modified an announcement by the Prime Minister of Malaysia into a hardstyle remix. Which incidentally got the attention of the Prime Minister himself. Not forgetting a worth mention would be Whatsapp where my mother feeds me daily news regarding the situation of the virus and the daily update of hotspots. Its Chinese rival Wechat is noticed to be slower and have decreased quality especially for voice and video chats, however, this might be due to an overall increase in internet usage.
Streaming Entertainment and News
Netflix had to decrease its definition to stream to users in some parts of the world due to the surge in demand with a 47% increase in subscription in March compared to the month before. That in itself is a testament to the surge of demand these operators are having. Relatively newcomer Disney+ saw a 5X increase in subscribers from the months before mainly due to canceling of schooling in this region. In that sense, Covid-19 has a blessing for these apps.
Other media channels such as state-run televisions and cable TVs have all benefited from the more “captive” audience they have. Astro a cable TV operator from Malaysia reported an average of 70% increase in their viewership.
Overall it's estimated that people staying at home now are spending 30% more time on these channels. The next question is how to monetize these increases?
Medical products
Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co. shares have climbed 41%, fueled by a surge in demand for the life-saving devices. Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, has flooded hospitals worldwide with patients struggling to breathe.
Chairman Li Xiting, a Singapore citizen and the city-state’s richest man, has added $3.7 billion to his net worth this year and has a $12.7 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That puts him among the top five gainers in the world. Jeff Bezos — the world’s richest person — is up to $3.4 billion, while Bill Gates is down $15.3 billion.
Besides that hand producers of hand sanitizer, face masks, rubber gloves, PPE (Personal protection equipment) all are having an increase in sales so much so that they cannot keep up with the demand with shortages reported everywhere.
An example of the hydra here would be alcohol distilleries who have repurposed their distilleries to make medical-grade alcohol/ethanol (the main ingredient most commonly used in the hand sanitizers). Other companies like Dyson, GE, and Boeing has also stepped up in producing ventilators.
Antibacterial soap makers have also noticed a significant increase in demand for their products. Washing hands habit is now more important than ever to help flatten the curve.
Pharmacies while to a lesser extend also gained from COVID. AA Pharmacy, a well know pharmacy in Malaysia was packed with people before the MCO with people stocking up on medicines and vitamin supplements. Long queues can often be seen outside Pharmacy outlets in Vietnam.
Cryptocurrency Trading
Big exchanges such as Binance and Huobi have registered a surge in user activity, primarily due to the unprecedented wild price swings for BTC and other cryptocurrencies. Especially on the 12th of March where prices of BTC went briefly below 4K. At the time of writing BTC (April 7th) is now trading at 7.4K, this is almost 1.8X in less than a month.
While ETH on the 12th of March dipped briefly below 100 USDT and it's now trading at 173 USDT, which translates to a 70% profit over the past 3 weeks. Meanwhile, a public chain project called Wienchain was listed last month on the 25th of March on the WenX platform at 0.015 USDT, and its currently trading at 0.07 USDT, still a very decent 5X return for 2 weeks of trading.
As part of our antifragility strategies, the team at WenXpro has started increasing its online profile, starting with some basic social media campaigns and online promotions across their Telegram groups, Linkedin, Twitter, and established their Gitlab and Github pages.
They also came up with new products such as Bitmore for more risk-averse investors. Bitmore is a product where you can invest Bitcoin with your capital guaranteed. This means that you will get back the amount you invested in Bitcoins in the event this product does not make returns or make a loss. This fund is operated by a group of professional traders that guarantee the amount of your capital back if the fund makes a profit, this profit will be allocated to those who have participated. Daily transactions of the fund are transparent and updated live on the page.
Conclusion
Overall, the whole Covid-19 situation has disrupted a lot of businesses taking out many casualties with the hardest hit being the travel industry, hospitality industry, and the aviation industries. A lot of things might not return to normal, and it will not return to normalcy anytime soon. The important thing is that we should endeavor to implement some form of antifragility into our business strategies that will help us survive through these tough times. We have to keep the hopes up and soldier on. 坐以待斃, 不戰而降, 大家加油!
