Local, The New Global

Several startups and larger players are racing to help Kirana stores digitise their operations. Will the market see consolidation going forward?

- Varsha Meghani

It’s 8 pm and Ramesh Sirvee has just wrapped up his day’s work. Normally, he would shut shop at 10 pm, he says, but because of the lockdown he’s had to restrict working hours at his neighbourhood grocery store in Bengaluru’s Hirandahalli area.

Earlier, even after downing shutters, Sirvee would spend another hour or so tallying the day’s sales scribbled in his Khata, or ledger.

Since signing up with KhataBook, a Bengaluru-based startup that lets shopkeepers maintain a digital ledger, Sirvee has been able to save time, cut inefficiencies and, importantly, cut his pending receivables by half. So if he was owed ₹8 lakh at the end of the month by customers buying items on credit, he’s been able to retrieve at least ₹4 lakh in a week, instead of waiting for a month or longer for them to pay up. “Often I would forget who owed us what and we would never get our payment,” says Sirvee. Now with KhataBook— which he has been using for almost two years—timely reminders are sent to him as well as his customers on pending payments via SMS.