Billing and udhaar for every shop in Gujarat
Cloth, sweets, dairy or kirana: the bill and the udhaar move from the chopdo to your phone.
Rajkot goldsmiths, Banaskantha potatoes and Junagadh groundnut: Gujarat shops by district
Every district in Gujarat trades in its own way. Four of them, and what each is known for.
- Rajkot's Soni goldsmiths and silver craftsmen make jewellery, and the city is also known for textile printing and for metal and wood carving.
- Banaskantha is Gujarat's largest potato producer, and Banas Dairy at Palanpur, sold under the Amul brand, is Asia's largest dairy cooperative.
- Bhavnagar is an important trade city, 50 km from Alang, the world's largest ship-breaking yard, and is famous for its ganthiya snack.
- Junagadh's economy is mainly farming: over 65% of the area is under oilseeds, mainly groundnut and cotton, and the National Research Centre for Groundnut is here.
Navratri midnights, the Diwali new book and Uttarayan kites: where a Gujarat shop loses count
At midnight in Navratri the counter changes hands
In the nine nights the shop stays open as long as the garba grounds are full. The father minds the counter until ten, then the son takes over, and the cash box and the loose slips pass from one hand to the other. In the morning the father says he left one number, the son says a smaller one, and nobody can tell which slips on the spike belong to which night.
The Diwali new year, when every open balance is copied by hand
Many Gujarati shops start a fresh account book for the new year after Diwali, and every customer who still owes has to be copied into it. A name is missed, a figure is read wrong, and in the first week of the new year a family says it owed less. The old book is the only proof, and it is already closed.
Kite week, when string is sold by the spool and kites by the hundred
For the days around Uttarayan on 14 January a corner of the shop turns into a kite stall. Kites go by the hundred, string by the spool, and a boy who buys ten pays differently from a man who buys a bundle. By the evening of the thirteenth nobody can say how many bundles are left, and the wholesaler's phone call is made from guesswork.
What a Gujarat shop uses, from the new-year book to the kite stall
Credit book (khata)
A page for each family on udhaar, dated bill by bill, so the new-year opening is a reading of the page and not a copy into a new book.
Daily reports
Today's sales so far, read out at the handover on a garba night, and any earlier night opened beside it.
Your own online shop
A page of the shop's own, ready to share in the family WhatsApp group that runs from Ahmedabad to cousins in other cities.
Many shops, one owner
A family with a shop in town and another in the village sees both from one account, with the godown stock beside them.
Orders to suppliers
The orders to the Surat cloth agent and the Rajkot wholesaler, each with what arrived against it, in front of you on the day the old accounts are settled.
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A new year that opens with every balance already in place
The new year opens each page where the old year left it
Each customer who buys on udhaar has a page, and the dues are already on it. At the new year you open the page, read out the amount and the dates, and carry on. There is no copying into a fresh book and no first-week argument about what was written.
The handover read off the phone, not off the spike
Every sale is made as a bill, so when the son comes to the counter at ten, the father opens today's sales and reads out what has gone so far. The son carries on from that number, and in the morning the bills are the same ones both of them saw. The spike of slips is no longer the only record.
The kite stall counted by evening, the wholesaler called with a number
Each bill takes its kites and spools off the stock. At closing on the twelfth you see how many bundles are left and ring the wholesaler with a real figure, not a feeling. On the fourteenth the stall has what it needs and the corner goes back to being a corner.
What a Gujarat shop owner asks about the new-year book and the kite stall
The workshops near my shop buy small parts on trust. Can each workshop have a page apart from the walk-in customers?
Yes. Open a page in the workshop's name and put each buying on it with its day. The walk-in customer pays at the counter and needs no page, so one account holds both without mixing them. The workshop's owner can ask what he owes, and you read it off his page.
The kite stall sits in front of my shop for ten days. Can those days be read apart from the rest of the year?
Yes. Every day's sales are kept under their own date, so the days around 14 January can be opened one by one, set beside the other months, or set beside next January.
My brother runs the family shop in Rajkot and I run ours in Ahmedabad. Can both of us see everything?
Yes. Both shops, and any godown behind them, can sit under one account. Each keeps its own stock and its own sales, and the owner looks at them together or one at a time.
Manek Chowk, Surat and Vadodara: how Gujarat's big trades shape the shops around them
Manek Chowk in Ahmedabad is a vegetable market in the morning, one of India's largest gold, silver and jewellery markets by day, and a food market at night. A shop in that lane sells to one crowd after another as the day turns.
Surat accounts for 70% of India's rough diamond cutting and polishing, says the city corporation. For a general shop in Gujarat, many of the people at the counter live by a trade that has nothing to do with the goods on the shelf.
Vadodara has over 35% of India's power transmission and distribution equipment makers, with an estimated 800 supporting ancillary units. With that many workshops in one city, the hardware and electrical shops around them have small business customers as well as walk-ins.