The problem nobody built for
Walk into any Indian neighborhood and you'll find one within 200 meters: a kirana store. A shopkeeper who knows your family's grocery list better than you do, sells rice by the fistful, and has been running the same ledger-and-memory system for twenty years.
Now walk through the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) — India's answer to letting any seller, not just Amazon or Blinkit, plug into digital commerce. In theory, this is exactly the lifeline kirana stores need to compete with 10-minute delivery apps. In practice, almost none of them are on it.
Why? Because getting listed means digitizing a catalog — hundreds of SKUs, prices, categories, descriptions — and typing all of that into a form is a full-time job the shopkeeper doesn't have time for. Half their inventory doesn't even have a barcode: loose grains, regional snacks, hand-weighed spices. There's no "Add to Catalog" button for a kilo of unbranded toor dal.
That gap — between wanting to go digital and having the hours to do it — is the actual bottleneck. Not technology access. Not willingness. Time.
