LEVERAGING THE NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS

India has almost 15 million shops. What holds this essential segment back is the lack of broader market access and branding. It's time to think different

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NDIA is a nation of shopkeepers. Today, we boast a total of 14.6 million shops in the nation.

Look around. Even as you and I step out of our homes, not more than three minutes goes by without passing either a paan shop, a small kirana or daily provisions store, or a large supermarket. Our lives are a clutter of small shops. We are spoilt bad. For our every need, want, desire and aspiration, there is a store close by. At arm's-length reach. At desire's-length reach even.

Look at it from another perspective.

How many of us have a shop within us? How many of our close relatives actually run a shop, big or small? The answer is loaded. We have a shopkeeper in our family either in the first, second or third rung of relationships. The shop and its upkeep is therefore within our DNA as Indians in more ways than one. If you don't own a shop, you possibly cater to a shop. You sell stocks into a shop possibly through a sales and distribution business. And then there is yet another enterprise that intermediates between the manufacturer and the retailer at the street level. Informal numbers indicate the size of this business in sheer number terms to be as large as $1.3 trillion in 2022 when last audited. Finally, all of us are related to shops in some way or the other. Which one of us has survived without going out to that small little shop to buy a bar of soap, sugar or cigarette? The shop then is the true-blue representative of early-stage small entrepreneurship. It began with a shop and in many ways it ends with a shop.