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Many South African businesses will suffer during the national lockdown, and many will be forced to close their doors.

You can find details on how to apply for the temporary employee / employer relief scheme here, and more on the South African Future Trust (SAFT) here.

In terms of supporting local businesses, you can also find some great deals in Friday’s PayJustNow Day sale.

Obviously, though, some companies are cashing in big time during the pandemic, especially those where people can make use of their services from the comfort of their own homes.

VICE has put together a list, which features some familiar names up top. We’ll start with those.

Amazon

If you needed one more reason to be pissed off at Jeff Bezos, here it is: The Amazon founder is now $5.5 billion richer than he was back in January. Part of that is because Bezos sold off a bunch of Amazon stock just before markets crashed in February. His remaining shares are gaining in value as investors bet that Amazon comes out of this crisis stronger than ever, just as it did in 2008. With physical stores closed, many unlikely to ever reopen, Americans will become increasingly dependent on the e-commerce giant, which has been accused of exposing its employees to dangerous conditions during the pandemic and recently fired a warehouse employee who organized a walkout.

It’s true, they did – read more on that here.

Zoom

Social distancing sucks, but not for Eric Yuan. Perhaps no one has personally profited from the coronavirus crisis more than the Zoom founder, whose net worth grew by $2 billion this year as quarantines and lockdowns took hold across the world, launching him into slot number 274 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Important announcement for anybody using Zoom – remember to turn off your camera when going to the toilet.

Campbell Soup

This company falls into the “unexpected windfall” category. A year ago, Campbell Soup posted a quarterly net loss of $59 million, in part caused by the longer-term trend of people wanting to eat fresh food instead of canned meals. But with all the panic-buying, hoarding and stocking up taking place because of COVID-19, the company’s fortunes are temporarily turning around, resulting in it recently posting net income of $1.2 million in its most recent earnings report.

While that’s great in the short term, experts predict that people will soon turn away from canned foods when life returns to normal – whenever that is.

I’m sure the Doomsday ‘preppers’ are well stocked with soup.

Activision Blizzard

People are bored, anxious and stuck at home. Many of them will fill their every waking hour with video games. That’s the logic behind many investors seeing the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft game developer as a smart place to put their money, even if shares in the company are currently down.

Gamers gonna game, especially when the lockdown provides the perfect excuse. Our resident gaming expert offers these suggestions.

We’ll call it there, but you can bet anybody involved in the making or selling of disinfecting products, handwash, soaps and the like is also sitting rather pretty right now.

A reminder to support local businesses where possible over the coming weeks and months.

[source:vice]