The rush to turn ‘smart’ spills on to online portals
CHENNAI: A few recent trends triggered by the pandemic confess to the wide digital divide in societies within our ‘global village’. With companies urging employees to work from home and educational institutions commencing the academic year online, market websites are buzzing with queries for purchase of used electronic gadgets, especially laptops and smartphones.
For any locality in Chennai corporation limits, OLX, an online marketplace, has over 100 listings for laptops and wifi routers. The fact that these portals, along with some social media pages, deal exclusively with pre-owned products, give away the financial woes of the large number of people who visit these sites in search of a good deal.
On an average, parents and IT employees raise 15-20 queries daily for pre-owned laptops at my shop, says T Aravindh, who runs a laptop service shop in Adyar. M Rajeshwari, a working woman, said that she along with her husband bought a used laptop for just Rs 15,000, after exploring many options. “Our kids found it very difficult to attend online classes without smartphones.
So we decided to buy them a laptop,” she added. On the other hand, a lot of people, who don’t have immediate need for their gadgets, are cashing in on the surge in demand. Even high configuration laptops are available in these websites for half the original price.