Street Vendors worried over losing customers to retail stores due to cash crunch

New Delhi, Dec 3 (KNN) The street vendors are not only being hardly hit due to no customers with cash in hands to buy products from them, but they are also worried that they are losing their customers to retailers and online grocery shops.

Demonetization has proved to be a boon for many sectors such an e-commerce, online grocery, mobile wallets etc. Lack of cash has forced even the not-technical crowd taking digital way for buying products and making payments.

And on top of that in winters people easily do with weekly shopping of fruits and vegetables as they remain fresh for quite some time. So many people prefer buying vegetables or fruits also from the retail stores where they can make payments through cards.

Talking to KNN, Arvind Singh, President, National Street Vendors Association, said, “The customers of street vendor, vegetable sellers are shifting to retail stores like Big Bazaar, Reliance Fresh etc to buy vegetables, fruits and other daily need products where they can make payments through cards.”

This has not only affected the small vendors but has also hit the wholesalers and mandis as a whole, he added.

Singh said the small vendors in and outside the malls, usually benefit from the malls, but right now the overall purchasing power has come down, hence, buying has been affected, he said.

Singh said that due to lack of business, most of the street vendors are moving back to their villages.

The vegetable sellers at the Mandis mostly said that their business has come down to less than 50% of what it was.

Many of them said the people who are coming to buy vegetables from them, they are giving Rs 2000 notes as new Rs 500 notes are not easily available in the market. They are unable to return change hence incur loss sometimes.

The Street Vendors Association has sought attention from the bankers to come out with easy solutions for them and some proactive steps to ease the situation. (KNN/ RAS)