Billing for your kirana and grocery store in Punjab
A pao of dal, a sack of cattle feed and the day everyone buys at once, all on your phone.
Tools that fit a village grocery in Punjab
Daily reports
The ice cream and lassi sold on each day of the June heat, read week by week, so the next hot spell is stocked from what really went.
Orders to suppliers
The feed sacks ordered for the next lot, and the day the trolley brought them noted against the order.
Offers for regular customers
A small discount for the dairy farmer who comes to you for feed every fortnight, shown on his bill.
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Ludhiana's workshops and Bathinda's grain market behind a kirana counter
A kirana's customers work in the districts around it, in factories, on farms and at the grain market.
- Ludhiana's biggest industries are hosiery and textile, followed by cycles, cycle parts, machine tools and auto parts.
- Bathinda grain market received 795 tonnes of paddy between 5 and 11 October 2026; rain wetted stock lying in the open.
From the first evening of the rush to the morning count of the fridge
The rush counted as it goes, so the empty tin shows on the second day and not the third
A rumour sends the whole lane for oil and pulses, and for three days the drawer fills. Make each item a line with its count: at the end of the first evening you open the list and see which oil, which pulse and which soap are nearly gone. Three days later you read the rush back, item by item, and see a good week in the drawer that left a bad week on the shelf.
The feed sack as an item by the sack, counted in the godown and on the bill
Make the feed an item sold by the sack, with the godown stack counted apart from the shelf. A trolley can take the whole stack in one load, and the stack's count drops to zero in one bill, which is why it is counted in the godown and not on the shelf. A farmer who asks how many sacks he took this year can be shown, bill by bill.
The fridge counted in the morning against the evening's bills
In the June heat a power cut melts the ice cream tubs first and warms the lassi sachets. Count the tubs and the sachets as pieces, and what was lost is a number of pieces, found by counting the fridge in the morning against the evening's bills. Next June that number tells you how few tubs to keep cold.
Women's groups who put a shop's bills and stock together
Why a Punjab kirana is hit by a rush, a feed sack and a June power cut
The day the news sends everyone for oil and pulses
Some mornings a rumour or a bit of bad news passes along the lane and everyone arrives at once for cooking oil, pulses, cereals, soap and spices, in bulk. The shelf empties in an hour. You sell as fast as you can and you do not know which items are gone until a customer holds up a hand and asks. By the second day you have to order again, and you cannot say how much. A rush that lasts three days looks like a good week in the drawer and a bad week on the shelf.
Cattle feed beside the tea, and a trolley that takes the whole stack
A village kirana in Punjab often sells feed sacks for the buffaloes beside the sugar and soap. A dairy farmer takes a sack or a whole trolley load, and the feed is bought by the sack while the tea is bought by the packet. In the same bill the farmer's feed and his children's biscuits are counted in two different ways, and the godown stack of feed is never checked against the bills.
A June power cut and a fridge full of ice cream and lassi
In the heat the fridge by the door holds ice cream, cold drinks and sachets of lassi, all sold by the piece. A power cut of a few hours in June warms the lot. You throw away what has gone soft, and nobody writes down how many pieces that was, so the loss is a feeling and not a number.
Questions a Punjab kirana owner asks
After a rush that the news sent, how much do I order the next morning?
A rush that comes from news is gone in a day or two: people buy out of fear, then stop. Order for the days the fear lasts, not the month, and let slow goods wait.
A dairy farmer asks how many feed sacks he took in the year. Can I show him?
Yes, if he has a page in his name. Each sack on a bill sits on the page with its day, so you can read him his sacks from the first of the year to the last.
Lassi sachets turn sour in the June fridge when the power is out. How many should I stock for the next hot week?
Count the sachets left next morning and set them against the count from the bills. The difference is the ones that turned.
What Amritsar's kirana trade saw
In an Amritsar festive season, retailers said family spending on FMCG and groceries rose 25 to 30 per cent while spending on branded clothes fell. In a Punjab lane the festival kitchens use oil, flour, sugar and pulses. A kirana can read which of them its own bills show rising.
During a war-scare rush in Amritsar, shoppers bought detergents, soaps, spices, cooking oil, cereals and pulses in bulk, said the Amritsar Retail Karyana association. Those six kinds are the lines a kirana checks first on any day when news makes people buy ahead.