Over 60% consumers from Hyderabad suffered income Loss due to Covid-19: Paisabazaar Survey Report
Hyderabad: Delhi-NCR and Mumbai were the most impacted cities in terms of loss of income and loan repayment capacitydue to the Coronavirus pandemic, according to a consumer insights report by Paisabazaar.com, India’s largest digital marketplace for lending products. The survey showed Hyderabad was the 3rd most impacted city among the Top 6 metros, while Chennai was the least affected.
Over 8500 consumers of Paisabazaar.com between the age of 24 to 57 years from 35+ cities with a debt of Rs 1 lakh or more took part in this survey – ‘Dealing with Debt: How India plans to pay EMIs’.
According to this survey, over 86% of the self-employed customers reported a loss in income due to Covid-led restrictions. In fact, more than a fourth of self-employed customers said their income had come to nil due to the pandemic and the lockdown. There was a lesser but still significant impact on salaried customers. 56% of salary earners said their salary has been impacted due to the pandemic and the resultant restrictions; 12% said they have lost their job and have no income source currently, according to the survey.
“While there was widespread impact on consumers in the first 2-3 of months of the pandemic, we believe there has been steady recovery since July. With the economy beginning to get back to its feet, incomes of customer segments employed indeeply impacted industries like Travel, Aviation, Entertainment, Hospitality etc. should start getting restored gradually. Large lenders including Banks should also grow in confidence in willing to lend to these segments. However, supply of loans to self-employed and low-income segments would take longer to recover,” said Naveen Kukreja, CEO & Co-founder, Paisabazaar.com.
The survey revealed that Delhi and the NCR cities were the most impacted cities with 70% of their resident participants reporting a negative impact on income. Among these, 16% of customers from the NCR also said their income has come down to zero due to the pandemic related disruptions. However, in terms of percentage of customers who had a complete loss of income, Mumbai was the worst placed with 26% Mumbaikars reporting income plummeting to nil.Also, Mumbai had the highest percentage of moratorium takers, as 65% of customers from Mumbai who participated in the survey took a moratorium.
In Hyderabad, 63% of residents who participated in the Paisabazaar.com survey said they had suffered a negative impact on income due to the pandemic; 20% lost their income completely.Around 80% of self-employed Hyderabad residents and 58% of the salaried segment from the city suffered income loss, the survey revealed.
City-wise Analysis of income impact due to Covid-19 & lockdown
| Cities | % of Consumers who Suffered Income Loss | % of Consumers who Suffered 100 % Income Loss |
| Delhi NCR | 70% | 16% |
| Bangalore | 67% | 12% |
| Hyderabad | 63% | 20% |
| Mumbai | 61% | 26% |
| Chennai | 52% | 9% |
A big insight that came out of the survey was that a large section of the customers who had taken the moratorium were those whose income was not impacted and had the repayment capacity. 23% of the respondents who said they availed the moratorium any time during April to August, also reported they suffered no negative income disruption during this period.
Of the salaried customers who took the moratorium, over one-third (34%) of them did not suffer any impact on their salaries. A primary reason behind this could be fear of losing their job/significant cut in salaries in the future or even plain unawareness in some cases on the interest cost one would need to borne.
