Billing for your mobile and electronics shop in Rajasthan
A phone worth twenty thousand and a cover worth thirty rupees, both counted right.
Where a mobile counter loses money between the cover and the phone
The bench in the corner, where screws and spare parts go unwritten
In a town where phones are mended at the bench in the corner, a phone is opened for a screen or a battery. A screw goes in, a spare part goes in, and none of it is written. The money for the work is a few coins in the drawer. By the end of the week the drawer of spare parts holds less than the bills show, and nobody can say which job took what.
A visitor whose charger broke on the road
On the tourist roads a visitor walks in with a phone at two per cent and a cable that has split. He needs a charger within ten minutes because his bus is leaving, and his mind is on the bus, not on the price. The shop that cannot take his payment in seconds loses a sale a bus does not bring back.
The price on the customer's screen
A customer walks in with an online price on his own phone and asks the shop to match it. The shop's margin on a phone is thin to begin with. Without knowing what each model has actually earned, the shopkeeper agrees to the price and finds the month's profit was not what he thought. A phone's margin is made or lost in a few hundred rupees, and the shop usually learns what a model earned only when the stock is finished.
Rajasthan's districts, and what their customers do for a living
Phones are bought by people in every kind of work, and the mobile counter learns what each district does.
- Jodhpur is a major centre for carved wooden furniture, wrought iron and handicrafts, with a handicraft special economic zone at Boranada.
- The HPCL refinery complex at Pachpadra in Barmer will process 9 million tonnes of crude a year, and about 35,000 workers had been engaged there by February 2023.
- In Ajmer the industries that depend on minerals include feldspar grinding, asbestos cement pipes, cement, marble, granite and salt.
- Jaipur's Sitapura Industrial Area is an export zone with wooden article makers and textile units, and the city is known for block printing and blue pottery.
- Udaipur is renowned for miniature paintings and marble carvings, and it has the Shilpgram craft village.
Small cash by UPI, cables counted by type, the haat table kept apart
A ten-rupee charge paid by UPI, so the drawer never runs short of change
Put a QR on the charging shelf. A villager scans it and pays the ten rupees from his own bank app, and the day's total already holds it. The shop stops hunting for change and the small money is written without anyone writing it.
A tour agent's power banks and cables for the guests he sends, billed in his name
A tour agent buys power banks and cables for the groups he sends down the tourist road. Make the bill in his name with the GST worked out, and send it to his phone. His page stays for the next group, and you read there what he took before.
The town counter and a table at the weekly haat, one stock
Keep the shop in town and the table at the weekly haat under one account, each with its own stock. You see which covers and chargers sold at which place, and you load the right ones for the next haat. The haat table's takings are counted on the phone the same evening.
Tools for a counter of phones, covers and repair slips
Bills on your phone
Each phone, charger and cover as its own line with its own price, so the customer's total reads like the box in his hand.
UPI payments
For a phone worth many thousands, the buyer pays from his own bank app and the bill is marked paid before the box leaves the counter.
Daily reports
What charging and recharge earned in a week, listed with the covers and cables.
What Rajasthan mobile shop owners ask
The haat table sells chargers to visitors who leave town the same day. Where do I note a charger that was bought and then returned at the shop?
Cancel its bill and put the charger back on the shop's count. The haat table's count and the shop's count each stay right, and the cancelled bill shows where it was sold.
Some models of cover are never asked for at the haat. How do I see which to leave at home?
Look at the covers that sold in town and never at the table. Those models are the ones to leave at home next week, and the table carries the ones the haat really asks for.
A visitor says his phone's name and I must find the right cable at once. How?
Put the phone models a cable fits in the cable's item name. The list then shows the cable that fits his phone and how many you have, so you say yes or no before he finishes the sentence.
Rajasthan's mobile retailers say what they are up against
The Rajasthan Cellular Association's president says online trade has hurt mobile retail and that 5,000 mobile stores have closed in Rajasthan. A shop that has stayed open knows what each customer bought, what it earned and who comes back, and those are the things the online price cannot take away.
A mobile retailers' association letter to the Rajasthan Chief Minister's office says about half a million smartphones sell in the state monthly, and 25 per cent cost under Rs 10,000. A cheap phone brings a cover, a charger and a repair, so the small things matter as much as the box.