Deals with the Local Kirana Guy

Do Try This at Home …

We all have that one person in our life that we must visit at least once daily. For me, that was the local Kirana guy. Now that is not a big problem as it’s nice to get out and meet a few people during this post-pandemic era.

The problem was the transactions we made with the Kirana Guy. Let’s call him KG from now onwards. If you are not in the city, you will know it involves a lot of cash transactions. And this is a headache. I mean who carries cash these days?

The Deal Number 1

So it was decided, that I would have to teach KG about Google Pay. It took a lot of time to convince KG that GPay is perfectly safe and would be very easy to transact for us on a daily basis. The result — today KG prefers GPay over cash from all his customers. The locals are surprised when KG tells them “just Gpay me the amount”. He still has to be convinced to install the QR code in the shop though. One day KG, one day.

Well, the cash problem was sorted but we are millennials, and we are never satisfied with things. We need better ways to do things. Soon I realized that there were a lot of Gpay transactions happening now. I only replaced my wallet with a digital wallet. That is when KG was put forward the second deal.

The Deal Number 2

Let us go back to our old credit system KG. And KG was oh no!. Local shop owners panic pretty easily when they hear “Credit”. The reason being us. We buy things and forget to pay for them conveniently.

The deal was to record all the transactions happening and pay on a monthly basis. The problem was KG doesn’t own a big shop and is usually low on funds to buy things from the market. So we decided on a 15-day cycle. So all credit will be cleared twice — on the 15th and the last day of the month. KG was still a bit skeptical about the process as there was still a high chance of forgetting things or misrecording transactions. So we decided of using WhatsApp for recording our transactions. The idea was before you leave the shop, after buying things, you WhatsApp the total purchase amount. This way you have the date, amount, and the surety that the transaction is shared between me and KG. On the settlement day, we add up all the amounts and pay via GPay to KG. We send confirmation messages of settlement too on WhatsApp because we are professionals :P.

On my side, I use an app called Spending where I have created two tags — namely Cycle1 and Cycle2. So everything from 1 to 15 goes to Cycle1 and everything from 15 to the last of the month goes to Cycle2. This way I walk up to KG on the 15th and say “KG you will get x amount” as my Cycle1 adds up the amount for me.

The result — anyone from my family can go to KG and buy things without worrying about payment. They WhatsApp me the amount and I WhatsApp KG for the purchase. I hear KG still keeps a record of WhatsApp in his notebook. But it’s getting outdated every time I go to settle and WhatsApp is giving him a better track. Hoping to make KG’s notebook obsolete soon.

And that is how we went from Cash to Credit to a Systematic Way of Purchase. As a customer, I went from wallet to digital wallet to no wallet now. The next step — I am building an app by which I can connect the entire village and improve sales and system for KG once and for all. KG if you are reading this, buckle up!