Jo Jeeta Wohi Dukaandar

Enough and more has been written about e-commerce in India. From India, by India. Enough and then some, really. Large and successful companies have waxed eloquent. Smaller, bootstrapped dwarves that eventually went belly up (or not!) have either waxed miserable or stoically licked their wounds to sellout or shutdown. Some have even gone on to become recapitalised and re-avatarised, morphing into something else entirely. Poster boys have been born and digital ding dongs have singsonged their way to the bank and beyond too. All because we want shit delivered to our doorstep. Like the rest of the world.

So I am not adding more drops to the pool.

This piece really is a loner’s notes on selling. And buying. Sure, over the net and all that. Through the phone and all that. Coming home and all that. No questions asked returns and all that. Click and pay convenience and all that. But fundamentally, about people buying stuff that they mostly don’t need, to fuel desires they mostly never felt in the first place and paying with cash that they mostly haven't earned yet.

But all that is fine, really. How else is the economy going to grow? If the money cycle doesn't spin faster and faster, if stuff doesn't get taken off the conveyor belt faster and faster and if shit doesn't get consumed faster and faster - then we are all doomed to live out the lives of our grannies. That is BS.

If the customer is king (and he is, make no mistake) then retail is the king's playground. His harem and his temple. His shrink and his tutor. And online retail is just all that, at the speed of an OTP (one time password, dufus).

And in a nation of shopkeepers (that's India today, in case you are wondering) - we get it. We have been buying and selling shit long before we opened our eyes. Today, like any other day, there are leading retailer brands - both sellers as well as marketplaces, that are joining the unicorn brigade globally. Business and sales have never been sexy like this before. GMV (ah ha! WTF is that, you ask?) is at an all time high and topline sales numbers are looking like China's population numbers raised to the index of India's. VCs and the common man, the public Joe and the mighty bankers - everyone wants a piece of that tail called retail. There's no slaking that thirst easily. Amazon, Flipkart and other giants are building habits, not markets. They want us to rely on their apps for everything - from inspiration to products and services to self worth. The world is moving to a day when we will thumb the Amazon app to help us figure what we want to do with our time, our life. Maybe even our after-life.

And that is fine. The shopkeeper wins.