Billing for every shop in Tamil Nadu, on your phone
The bill, the stock and the udhaar of the street all sit on one phone, not in a notebook.
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Where Tamil Nadu's shops get their goods and customers
Every district in Tamil Nadu trades in its own way, and a shop owner there hears about it across the counter.
- In Chennai, the Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex, built by CMDA on 295 acres to decongest central Chennai, has 3,194 shops for perishables.
- Kanchipuram silk sarees, worn as bridal and special-occasion wear across South India, are GI-recognised; in 2008 about 5,000 families made them.
- Vaniyambadi and Ambur, in the old Vellore district, are leather centres making finished leather, shoes and garments for export.
- Malgoa mango is the pride of Salem, and tapioca, grown widely and used mainly to make starch, is another major crop.
- Viluppuram is called the sugar bowl of Tamil Nadu: its sugarcane supplies all the cane for 7 sugar mills in the district.
- Coimbatore has many textile mills and more than 700 wet grinder makers, and is famed for the quality of its cotton and dyed fabric.
- Tirunelveli is known for its halwa sweet, which visitors buy to take home, and is a venue for textile shopping.
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The Pongal rush, the online price on a customer's phone and the street that pays on salary day
Everyone shops in the same week before Pongal
Before Pongal 2018, sugarcane bundles reached Chennai's Koyambedu market from Cuddalore, Madurai and Theni, and over one lakh buyers came on Bhogi day alone. A shop in any town feels the same push: rice, jaggery, cane and flowers all go in a few days, the line at the counter does not shrink, and the rate that was right on Monday is wrong by Thursday. The notebook has no space for that speed.
A customer holds up a cheaper price on his own phone
A shopkeeper on Chennai's Wallers Road said that customers show him e-commerce prices and ask him to lower his, which sometimes stretches him too thin. The same thing happens at a cloth shop, a mobile shop or a medical store in a smaller town. If you cannot show at once what each item cost you and what you earn on it, you do not know how far down you can go.
The street that pays only when the salary comes
Many known families on a Tamil Nadu street settle their account on salary day. If you stop the udhaar, they walk to the next shop; if you give it, the pages of the notebook stop matching by the end of the month, and you feel shy to ask for the full amount.
A rate changed once at dawn, a Pongal week kept for next year
This Pongal week becomes next year's order
Rice, jaggery, cane and flowers all leave in a single week. That week's sales stay in the daily report, so next year you open the same days and order by what really went, not by a guess in your head.
The Pongal cane and flower stall, read apart from the shop behind it
At Pongal a shop sets up a stall of sugarcane and flowers at the roadside, and the town shop carries on behind it. Each is its own counter under one account. At the end of the week the stall's sales and the shop's are read on their own, so you see which one earned, and next Pongal you know how many hands the stall needs.
Salary day without an argument
A family that pays at month end can see what it took and on which day, because every credit bill carries its date. When the salary arrives and they stand at your counter, the talk is about the total, not about whether Tuesday happened. You can keep giving udhaar to the street.
What the phone does at a Tamil Nadu counter
Bills on your phone
A basket with a kilo, a dozen and a metre in it, since Tamil Nadu shops sell all three: each line keeps its own unit and the total comes out right.
UPI payments
A QR at the cane and flower stall on Bhogi day, so the crowd pays and goes, and the stall's bills can be read apart from the shop behind it.
Low stock warnings
A warning when jaggery, rice or cane run short in the Pongal week, so the order goes before the early Koyambedu load.
Daily reports
Each day's total at closing, with the udhaar pages beside it, so you know what the day brought and what is still owed.
Many shops, one owner
A second counter in the street that pays on salary day, under the same account, with its own sales and its own pages.
What Tamil Nadu shop owners ask before they start
The cane in my Pongal bag costs more this week than last. Do I have to remake the bag?
No. The bag is one item with one price. Change that price once, and every bill from then on carries the new one. The bills you have already sent stay as they were.
Can I see by noon on Bhogi day which items are leading?
Yes. At noon on Bhogi day the sugarcane, the jaggery and the rice are what the lane is buying, and the one that is ahead is the one to send for before the afternoon queue.
A load comes from Koyambedu early in the morning. How do I note what arrived?
Write each item with the quantity that came. If something that sells the same day, like flowers, arrives less than you asked for, you see it that morning, not in the evening.
A family bought a Kanchipuram silk saree for one wedding and comes back for another. Can I see what it bought before?
Yes. The saree's bill is on the family's page with its day, its colour and its price. When the family comes back, open the page and read what it chose last time, so the second wedding starts from the first.
Tamil Nadu's markets, mills and cooperatives in numbers
Ritchie Street in Chennai is the go-to electronics market for buyers across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Today it is mostly mobile shops selling smartphones and accessories.
At Tamil Nadu's Uzhavar Sandhai farmers' markets, a committee fixes the daily price at about 20% above wholesale and 15% below retail.
Thanjavur's handmade bobblehead dolls, called thalayatti bommai, hold a Geographical Indication tag and are displayed in Tamil homes during Navaratri.
Aavin, the state dairy cooperative, buys milk through cooperative societies working in all the districts of Tamil Nadu.
The state's investment agency says Tamil Nadu produces 38% of India's footwear and employs 1.5 million people in the sector, mostly women.