“Blinxxit is now in your area. Delivering everything in 10 minutes,” is the sign outside an apartment complex in Attapur. Inside the apartment complex, in the parking area is a refrigerator kept by another quick delivery supply company where buyers with the app can scan the barcode and pick up what they need. The refrigerator is stocked with packets of chips, vegetables, milk, dosa batter, curd, canned juices, fruits, onions, potatoes and other vegetables. Never mind finding onions and potato chip packets in a refrigerator but the race to supply household goods at a clip has intensified in the city. These quick deliveries have dealt a blow to the mom and pop kirana stores that are folding up or are being forced to reinvent themselves.
“We had two kirana stores in this lane. Now both places are run by different people. One has become a bakery with a few kirana items, another is a medical store with a few daily use items,” says a resident of Anand Nagar Colony.
“The business of kirana stores has declined. From March 2020 we have been facing problems as online retailing increased. Now the business has been down by up to 40% in urban areas,” informs Mahesh Kumar Gupta, secretary of Hyderabad Kirana Merchants’ Association. Sitting inside his wholesale market in Begum Bazaar that supplies dry fruits and groceries across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Gupta has a ringside view of the changing business pattern. “I know some of the kirana stores have closed down but I don’t have the exact number. Who knows they can reopen when the business becomes normal,” says Mr. Gupta who blames nuclear families and limited needs for the dip in kirana business.
Exactly 22 years ago, M.S. Reddy started Sri Sai Medical Store in Attapur area. It was a pure play medicine outlet which shared a common wall with a hospital. Now, Mr Reddy has competition. There are six other outlets in a 100-metre stretch of the bylane where Mr. Reddy began. “We are all passing time. I can’t switch to a new business. I don’t know how others are managing,” says Mr. Reddy about the sudden spurt in competition and dip in business. Among the seven medical stores that line the street, one started as a vegetable store. Then as Covid-19 shuttered businesses, the vegetable store turned into a store for generic medicines. “Initially, business was good but now the business is dull. We shifted to this when there were three stores. Now there are more,” says the lady who has a B. Pharmacy degree running the store.
The churn and pain due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on kirana stores is only unravelling slowly.
