Kirana stores reached out to customers through doorstep service

The bandh on Thursday was a blessing in disguise for the kirana stores in the city. It provided them the golden opportunity to display what international retail shopping chains could never have — a personal rapport with their customers.

Despite shutters being down to respect the nationwide bandh call to protest against the very foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail segment which is feared to hurt them, several kirana stores (provision stores which are owned and operated on a small scale and which are abundantly found in densely populated residential areas) supplied provisions to their regular customers through their delivery boys; but of course, on the sly for fear of being targeted by agitators who were forcing the shutters down.
Several households who had called up well-established retail chains had to turn back disappointed on door deliveries being turned down with the managers citing threat from agitators on a day of bandh.

But not so with the kirana stores.
Madhumathi Kudupa, a homemaker in Rajajinagar, was tickled pink when her neighbourhood kirana store owner supplied a kilogram of rice and some edible oil late Thursday morning after running out of the provisions after the Wednesday festivities.

Fear of violence in the densely populated Rajajinagar inhibited her from stepping out. Despite calling a well-known supermarket in the vicinity which had boldly opened its doors for customers, she was turned down a delivery request as the manager feared that his delivery staffers would be roughed up by miscreants if they came to know that supplies were being sent.

Sushila Raghunathan, a retired bank employee living in Vyalikaval, too, benefited from a friendly neighbourhood kirana store owner. She had called several supermarket chains that were located in her area and none was eager to send supplies through a delivery boy. “Then I thought of our neighbourhood kirana store, but its shutters were down. Still, I tried the owner’s number and he said ‘Don’t worry madam, I will have the provisions sent in a few minutes’. It was so assuring,” she said.

The store owners that DNA spoke to were wary of being named as they had risked continuing their supplies on a day of bandh, especially when the bandh was partly in protest against FDI being allowed in retail segment which would directly hurt them with the international competition. “But I felt it was a nice way to prove that we could do something which neither the present national retail chains nor any international retail chain could do; and that is rely on our personal rapport with our customers,” said a kirana store owner in Malleswaram, who is the third generation in the business. “We know our customers so closely that we have become a part and parcel of their happiness and sorrows; we even invite each other for functions at home.”

Some Kirana store owners said that on such days (bandhs and strikes), they kept provisions at home, which is instantly moved to customers on demand. “The difference between kirana stores and whatever international retail chains that may come our way in future is that the former are extremely flexible. That cannot be broken into by large retail organisations. It’s the rapport they have with us which takes the cake,” said Amarnath Rao, a septuagenarian who visits several kirana stores in his neighbourhood in the inner areas of Koramangala. “It’s like calling an autorickshaw driver you know very well directly on his mobile and trying to do the same thing with a call taxi driver. The taxi driver will direct you to his control room. You know, the bigger the organisation, the more impersonal things become,” he said.
Kirana store owners are aware about their unshakable strength. What are they afraid about international competition, one wonders.