Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

The kirana is so inescapable in India that no one knows how many of these neighbourhood grocery stores there are. I’ve seen estimates ranging from under seven million to 13 million. It makes you wonder if the brains behind these figures just picked a reasonably plausible number at random. But it’s for this very skill that consultants outearn journalists by a factor of… (It’s too embarrassing to mention.)

These mom-and-pop stores are also touted to be a massive untapped opportunity for the likes of e-commerce firm JioMart—both as an alternative to wholesalers and as last-mile fulfilment partners—and bookkeeping app Khatabook.

But I’m more concerned with the other common narrative about kiranas. The one about their continued relevance as more and more Indians shop at giant supermarkets and on grocery apps.

When I think of my own shopping preferences, I realise how true that is.

Why I’m more loyal to my kirana than to BigBasket

As the world around me, at least on social media, raved about Zepto delivering groceries in under 10 minutes, I was of course very curious about how it worked. As a reporter, it was my job to be curious.

As a consumer, though, I really didn’t care. My partner and I had no use for Zepto. In fact, we could just about do without online grocers till the pandemic happened. The kirana right outside the gates of our building in central Mumbai ensured we seldom had to look elsewhere for our daily needs. (There is no supermarket in the vicinity of our home, so that’s automatically ruled out.)

Housed within 250 sq ft, the store—named Bhagwati—was always at the top of its game. It had no other choice. There were two rivals within 50 metres and another three within 100 metres. Some of the other kiranas were bigger and stocked more items. A typical kirana has anywhere between 700 and 1,500 stock-keeping units.

Bhagwati had to make up for its small size in other ways. And it did, both by keeping certain niche products that none of the other stores did—rice and almond milk priced at Rs 350 (US$4.6) is a case in point—and by never saying no to delivering groceries at our doorstep.

Months after the first lockdown, we took to ordering on BigBasket every 10 days or so. But only because we wanted to eat healthy and compensate for not being able to eat out by splurging on fancy foods. So we would order free-range eggs and try out different cheeses, which Bhagwati didn’t have. And just to get to the minimum order value for free delivery, we would add a few more items to our list.