Local kiranas hop on to digital bandwagon to manage their daily business

Start-ups such as Max Wholesale, Jumbotail and ShopKirana are helping them place orders, maintain inventory, optimise delivery routes and make payments, all digitally

In India, kirana stores form an intrinsic part of every locality. Even though the Amazons and Flipkarts of the world are vying for a slice of this market, these local mom-and-pop stores are going strong as well. There are around 12 million kirana stores in the country each of which are doing 100-200 transactions a day on average but no company so far has been able to capture these millions of transactions.

In 2016, IITian Samarth Agarwal, who used to trade stocks on the BSE and NSE, felt technology was missing at his neighbourhood kirana which was doing brisk business