More offline garment, footwear and other retailers are looking to set up their own online storefronts and logistics for online deliveries, according to a study conducted among more than 20,000 freelancers and small businesses.

The study, conducted by Bengaluru-based invoice and payment system for freelancers, Refrens.com, measured the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on footfalls at offline businesses which has led to this trend.

“Retail is driven by where the audience is….as simple as setting up a Shopify-based e-commerce store to customized websites, we are seeing all kinds of requirements on our platform,” said Naman Sarawagi, cofounder of Refrens.com.

According to Sonakshi Nathani, founder of Y Combinator-backed Bikayi, while businesses were gradually moving online, the virus outbreak has accelerated the process by 2-5 years.

ShopKirana, a B2B platform for small shops, has seen a 30% rise in new registrations and the frequency of orders from existing customers rise two-fold since March, co-founder Sumit Ghorawat told ET.

Building industry-specific technology tools for businesses to go online is also a rising trend.

Over the last few months, several startups have expanded their offering to get businesses online.

For instance, in the restaurant space, Dineout’s B2B arm, ‘inresto’ launched a solution for home cooks to share the digital menu link with customers to order from Instagram and Facebook profiles, Whatsapp and SMS, in just a few clicks.

Dineout is owned by Times Internet, part of the Times of India Group that also publishes this paper.

On the B2B side, the adoption is equally strong for traditional brands.

“Traditional distributors lack the ability to communicate and take orders digitally from kirana, as a result, brands increasingly tying up with eB2B and kirana stores have a high dependency on eB2B,” said Ghorawat.