42-year-old Arvind has been running his Kirana store for about a decade now. As a regular tradition, he opens his store every day at 8 am, does his puja and starts his shop. The only thing which has changed over the years is, now he finds his customers ordering online, the same customers which he knew by name and learnt intricate details about their consumption habits.

Which begs the question – In the race to dominate the retail industry, has the Indian market lost its soul? Amidst hefty discounts and lucrative services, are we going to lose personal interface with the nearby dukandars, who are not just shopkeepers but also influencers of what we and our families have been buying over the years?

As upsetting as this sounds, we thought it’s imperative to empower the local retail network and help them survive the changing face of consumer buying in India. We realised it’s not a battle of online vs offline but how online can harmonize offline. As a proud part of start-up India, our software offers to digitalise the local retailers, with the features of POS Billing, Inventory Management, Sales & Purchase Automation, CRM and GST Filing. With our software, a shopkeeper can cater to his neighbourhood, while the customers can order online from their local stores.

The Peddle Plus app helps customers to order groceries and other household products from their nearby retail store, fostering an environment of personalised buying and trust in the purchase pattern. Not only will the customer get the item on the same day, he/she can return it to the seller in the same hour. Peddle Plus ensures that the personal bond between the retailer and the customer stays intact, which seems to be fading these days.

Our idea of empowering the hyper-localised small retailers is also supported by the phenomenon that purchase habits in India change every 50 km. For catering to such changing needs, we need people who know their specific customers personally beyond user-generated data and purchase cycles. This key differentiator has helped us celebrate 3,000+ happy users in India in over 10 cities. Our aim is to revive the local retail segment by connecting them to their specific customer base and helping them serve their personalised requirements with the integration of technology and modern methods.

We believe technology is not our rival, technology is a vision which can help better user experience and nurture the retail ecosystem in a manner that we don’t completely end old practices but modernise them. We stand strong with an opinion that these local stores are still in the game vs the big giants in the market.