Billing for your kirana and grocery shop in Madhya Pradesh
The ration list, the udhaar and the mandi trip, all on one phone.
The ledger page of a family, read before the next bag is packed
The pickle week's basket, tapped in as the family names the spices
When a family comes for the mango pickle it names the spices, the oil and the jars one after another. Each is an item with its own rate, so you tap them in as they are named, and the total is on the screen by the time the last jar is on the counter. The family reads the bill on WhatsApp at home.
The pickle weeks counted as they go, and the fenugreek counted after
Make mustard, fenugreek, turmeric and the jars items of their own. In the pickle weeks each goes down fast and you see it going. After the season the same count shows how much fenugreek is left in the sack, so you buy a smaller one next year.
Tuesday's list says oil, and Wednesday's customer finds it
In the pickle weeks the mustard oil drains first, faster than any other line, and sugar follows. They are the two to buy first on the mandi trip, before the slow sellers. The jars and the spice can wait a trip longer, the oil cannot, and the customer who asks for oil on Thursday finds a full tin.
Sagar's mills and Indore's soyabean fields behind the oil and flour
Two districts stand behind a Madhya Pradesh kirana's oil and flour, and three more send it customers.
- Sagar is a major road and agricultural trade centre, with oil and flour milling, ghee processing, handloom cotton weaving and bidi making. For a kirana that sells loose oil and flour, this is the district behind the sack.
- Indore is called a commercial capital, and soyabean is a kharif crop grown in most of the district. A kirana in a district like this sells soyabean oil by the half litre and the litre, each as its own item.
- Oranges grown in the Sausar and Pandhurna areas of Chhindwara, near the Maharashtra border, are supplied to Nagpur, the Orange City. Oranges from this belt travel out of the state, and a kirana near the border may stock the ones that stay.
- Jabalpur is home to the Gun Carriage Factory and the headquarters of West Central Railway; Bhedaghat nearby is known for its marble rocks. The families of the factory and the railway take their ration from the kirana through the month, and pay at the month's end.
Tools for a Madhya Pradesh kirana between two mandi trips
Low stock warnings
Oil is at the top of Tuesday's list, before the tin is empty on Wednesday, so the mandi trip starts with it.
Bills on your phone
The ten-item monthly list as one bill, each item at the rate that is in force today.
Credit book (khata)
The family that puts up pickle each summer has its mustard and fenugreek weeks on its page, and the winter's oil after them, each line dated.
Sell to other businesses
The provision shop two villages away applies to buy tea and soap on credit in a pickle week. Before you say yes, you read what it asked for against what your shelf holds, so you do not promise tea to a shop while your own families are waiting for it.
Your own online shop
The shop's page listing mustard, fenugreek, oil and jars for the pickle weeks, shared once in the village group, so families send their list the evening before the haat.
The shelf that turns over with the mango season, and ten items for one family's pickle
The back shelf that empties when the raw mangoes arrive
The week the raw mangoes reach the market, the shop smells of mustard and fenugreek. Families come for the spices, the oil and the jars, all at once, and the back shelf is bare in days. Then the season is over, and the half sack of fenugreek is still there next year.
The oil that finished on Wednesday and the sugar nobody needed
On Thursday a customer asks for oil and the tin is empty. The helper says it finished on Wednesday, and nobody wrote it down. On the same shelf, a sack of sugar sits full because it was bought last week in a hurry. The shop is short of what sells and full of what does not.
A pickle-week list read out one spice after another while he weighs
A family that pickles every year brings the same paper, and the helper reads it out as he weighs: fenugreek and mustard first, then oil and jars. The rates have moved since last year, so the old numbers on the paper are no help and he cannot add from memory. By evening the total is whatever he says it is.
Women's groups whose paper bills moved to one phone
What kirana owners in Madhya Pradesh ask
A customer brings back the unused half of her fenugreek once the pickle is put up. What do I do on the phone?
Weigh what she brings back. Cancel her bill and make it again for what she kept, and put the weighed half back on the count. Her page shows the cancelled bill and the new one, one after the other.
The fenugreek sack is half full when the pickle season ends. How do I buy a smaller one next year?
Fenugreek is a thin spice: a family takes a few hundred grams and the sack holds many kilos. Ask the dealer for a smaller bag, and buy next year for the families who came, not for the size of the sack.
A neighbour borrows a kilo of oil and returns it next week. Can I note that?
Yes. Give the neighbour a page, and note the oil on it with the day. When the oil comes back, you write that against the page.
Zardozi families in Bhopal and the Rewa mango that went abroad
Zari Zardosi, embroidery made with lustrous metallic threads by generations of skilled artisans, is Bhopal's One District One Product. A kirana in a neighbourhood of artisans knows its families by name, and gives each family a page of its own.
Rewa Sundarja is a GI-tagged mango, and its first export, to the UAE in June 2026, was bought at Rs 150 a kg against Rs 100 to 110 locally. When the mango season comes, a kirana's shelf changes with it: raw mango for the pickle, spices for the masala, and jars to fill.