Post-covid Urban Resilience Through Entrepreneurship: Vignettes from Kozhikode

Covid-19 has been a profoundly devastating pandemic spread wide and fast with terrible effects on economies, businesses, and people. Studies suggest that it can last for long in one form or another. Apart from preventive controls like social distancing, use of protective masks, and sanitization, getting vaccinated is the best way individuals could employ at this point. However, we are not clear on how long the protective immunity lasts. Resilience thinking has emerged as the dominant paradigm in covid-related studies. Urban resilience is an umbrella term that describes the measurable ability of urban systems, with its inhabitants, to maintain continuity through all shocks and stresses while positively adapting and transforming toward sustainability. Entrepreneurs form an essential part of urban inhabitants. We attempt to understand urban resilience with regard to Covid-19 through an entrepreneurship lens. In this chapter, we explore how entrepreneurs, as inhabitants, take part in the covid resilience of a city, with particular reference to the Kozhikode urban agglomeration of Kerala, India. Our exploration highlights how entrepreneurs sustained their ventures by transforming their business models to gain from opportunities and overcome the challenges posed by Covid-19.