Every morning certain hours after first light, you will hear shutters of the shops opening with a roar along with a groan of some middle-aged men stretching their back after pushing up the metal gate. Soliciting our Indian deities for profits after, the dukandaar starts his day. A rustic fan swerving on its axis and the essence of agarbati dispersing throughout the room is the kind ambience that you will be greeted with when you enter any retail shop in India. Accustomed to greet customers with a smile and sometimes irreverently answering their queries, the dukandaars will ceaselessly go about their routine without grumbling. The case with the unorganised retail market is that our fellow countrymen are accustomed to interacting with them.
The more frequently we see them the more they become invisible to us. In our hustle we forget that the unorganised sector balances our economy on their shoulder, their growth is directly proportionate to our growth. Without them, we will not have anything to hustle towards. Today the Indian retail market is valued at $450 billion, 90% of which are the unorganised retailers. With a titan share in the retail market, they are a pillar or to be more precise they are like the Atlas holding the world on its back pushing it towards the sky. As any businessman, even our corner mom and pop stores are opportunistic and they are looking for options to enhance their income, the dukandaar sitting under that veering fan is not thinking about the stalemate of his business rather waiting for the opportunities to knock his shop shutter.
That is where Pay1 comes in, our goal is to reduce the burden on the titan by giving it considerable support. Equipping the retailers with technology and services through which they can grow at a faster pace and strengthen their operative ability, is what we plan to achieve through our platform. Services like our newly launched AePS service will help the retailers to increase the footfalls in their shop establishment and also help these retailers to earn lucrative commissions, a service where the customer’s fingerprint and aadhaar number suffice for banking transaction will help overhaul the Indian market in general. Our objective is to not make these retailers digitally dependent but rather promote digital independence. We will empower the retailers, make them a center hub for banking transaction, payment hub and marketing hub for product and service companies.
The rumbling of the rusted metal shutters, which is a namesake protective barrier need not signify the archaic business practices of the dukandaars, infact it should be the opposite, the unabating sound of the shutters every morning demonstrates their determination to grow in their business. Pay1 supports the resolution towards their business and through various innovations, in the digital payment avenues we can organise the unorganised retail sector and help in the economy to grow at a faster pace.
