Retail businesses take a hit due to demonetisation

Ban of high denomination notes impacted retail businesses, including the jewellery stores in Hyderabad on Wednesday. Some jewellery showrooms such as Kalyan Jewellers and Joy Alukkas remained closed, while the rest of them hardly saw any business activity till afternoon.

Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement of demonitisation, there was a big rush at these showrooms till late night on Tuesday. Without even observing the item, customers have bought jewellery worth lakhs of rupees of in exchange of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes until the shops are closed, a city-based jeweller said on condition of anonymity.

"Some customers demanded us to sell the gold jewellery even after the closing time. So, we have extended our working hours. Though they insisted on more time, we have closed by 11 pm," Jos Alukkas Panjagutta store head Sajesh said.

Everyday, the jewellery stores in Panjagutta, Kukatpally and Basheerbagh get shut down by 9.30 pm, but most of them were functioning till mid night on Tuesday. Similarly, few retail chains like Big Bazaar were also open and served their customers as currency exchange centers.

At all these stores, the cash transactions were almost nil on Wednesday. Only card based transactions were seen at retail super markets and electronics showrooms.

"Daily we sell products worth more than Rs 50,000 during the first four hours of the day, but we have not sold even Rs 10,000-worth items up till now (afternoon)," said a store manager at LOT Mobiles in Somajiguda who was asked not to accept high denomination notes.

Md Mushtaq, director of IT Mall in Khairatabad said, "As most of our customers come to buy with cash, we wanted to continue to accept Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes till Friday. We can deposit these notes into the bank account."

He further said, "Card based transactions take place only to buy high-worth electronic items. Mobiles, pen drives and power banks are some of the products that are sold regularly. We are struggling to give change when customers come with high denomination notes."

Small stores, travel agents, restaurants and wine shops in the city are still accepting Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes but facing challenges due to scarcity of Rs 100 notes at the cash counters. Lack of loose change, the customers also faced problems. They are forced to buy unwanted items to make the bill a round-figure amount.