Manu Joseph: Blinkit and Zepto make speedy deliveries. So why are corner stores still around?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The guy who runs the kirana store in my colony has a wounded look about him because I don’t go there anymore. Things were not good between us even without that.
He thinks I ask him for products that do not exist in the real world just to belittle him before marching off to a posh store with overpriced grains marked ‘whole’ and ‘organic’ and packed in brown paper. A few months ago, for instance, I visited the kirana store after a long gap because Blinkit didn’t have what I was looking for. I asked him for black rice.
He had never heard of it, which surprised me because I thought anyone who owns a farm would know all kinds of grain. He told me that he had white rice, which he could paint black. It made some customers and his staff laugh.
So when I recently walked into his store again, he had this look as though I was there to settle a score, which complicated the humane nature of the question I had for him. How was he holding up in the age of quick-delivery apps like Blinkit? “Fine," he said. “They have nothing to do with me; I’m doing great," he said, with some defiance.
Look around, he said, “there are a lot people." That was true. But surely these apps have affected him? “A bit," he said, “just a bit; people need to come to a store." Across all big cities, kirana stores have been severely affected according to several surveys that I tend to believe, even though I don’t usually take surveys very seriously. This makes sense.
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