A faint glimpse of the twilight sun is visible on Mohanan’s face as he sits staring at his mobile screen in front of his shop, a stone’s throw from the Thamalam level crossing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Residents pass by, but there is no hope in his eyes that any of them will come to his shop to buy essential items for the house.
When asked how his sales were going, the 62-year-old man said, pointing to shelves with various items arranged haphazardly around, “You can see yourself. It’s all over.”
He has been sitting at this shop for more than 50 years, ever since his father opened it in the neighborhood in which Mohanan has lived his entire life.
“It’s even sadder because I have seen better days in the past. Even five or six years ago, my daily sales ranged from ₹3,000-₹5,000. Now I barely make even ₹300 sales on most days. I stocked a sack of rice about a month ago, but I haven’t even sold half a kilogram of it. Why would anyone come here when they can deliver everything home? I just come and sit here every morning because it’s a It’s become a habit. Soon, I’ll have to close the shop and find another job, perhaps as a security guard, that will pay more,” Mohanan said.
now a common pattern
Mohanan’s plight is not an aberration, but part of a pattern that is rapidly spreading in Kerala as well as across the country as instant-commerce platforms and corporate-backed large retail stores are spreading their wings and entering smaller urban centers and even rural areas.
Although early players in the instant-commerce scene began their operations in a limited, experimental manner in cities like Kochi in Kerala about five years ago, major expansion happened in the last two years. Currently, Swiggy, Instamart, Blinkit, Big Basket, JioMart and Zepto all have operations in the state. With the promise of quick doorstep delivery and attractive prices, these platforms are an attractive proposition for consumers, while many youth have also found employment as delivery partners. Parallelly, major retail chains, including Reliance, have expanded rapidly in the towns and rural centers of the state.
From a consumer perspective, all this creates a rosy picture, but a walk around the commercial areas as well as the neighborhoods reveals the plight of those who are struggling in the digital age. Its impact has also been felt by relatively big businessmen whose businesses have been thriving for decades, like 59-year-old K. Unnikrishnan, whose family has been running Kumar Stores in Neyyattinkara for 70 years.
Padmakumar, owner of an old grocery shop in Thiruvananthapuram’s Poovachal village, checks out the shop that he has gradually converted into a fertilizer depot. | Photo Credit: Nirmal Harindaran
“Earlier, our sales on the first of every month used to be over ₹50,000 and the average sales during the rest of the month were ₹25,000. Now, the first sales of the month have come down to ₹10,000 and the average sales are ₹5,000,” says Unnikrishnan.
“We used to have five sales staff and one cashier. Now there is only me and one other person. Both the quick-commerce firms and the big supermarkets have affected us, as we cannot afford to give the deep discounts they offer. I am not planning to take more risks or loans to improve the business as I do not have much hope of beating this recession,” he says.
predatory pricing mechanism
The change taking place now is not something that any of them could have imagined even a decade ago. Kerala Traders Vyaparyi Ekopana Samithi (KVVES), the traders’ body that has been raising concerns over quick-commerce as well as the predatory pricing mechanisms of big retail chains for some time, is feeling this change in its declining membership numbers.
According to Babu Kottayil, vice president of KVVES, in recent years an average of 20-30% of various trade businesses close down every year across Kerala, while 10-15% of new ones open annually, resulting in a net decline of 10-15% in the number of such businesses. A large number of new businesses are restaurants or cafes.
Unnikrishnan, owner of Kumar Stores grocery shop in Thiruvananthapuram’s Neyyattinkara town, checking the empty old racks in his store. | Photo Credit: Nirmal Harindaran
Babu says, “Multiple factors are at play, including quick-commerce platforms and large supermarket chains. Both of these have penetrated even the smallest towns. Small traders are now going out of business at a very rapid pace. Large corporate players, who dictate competition, are now present in every sector, be it provisions, electronics or apparel. Since they dictate the prices, margins for small-scale traders fall drastically, forcing them into debt traps.”
Large “dark stores”, the name given to warehouses used by instant-commerce applications in various neighborhoods to ensure superfast delivery, have now opened up in rural areas as well. With no display boards outside, the only clue to their presence is the large number of delivery agents on two-wheelers in the vicinity. Since their stocks rarely come from local markets and are obtained through large supply chains, local producers or traders do not benefit from their huge growth.
Gopi, 84, who runs Sri Panchami Variety Store in Chiramukku, Thiruvananthapuram, says declining sales, high rents, business license fees, electricity bills and even food safety license fees for selling snack packets have made the entire business unsustainable. “There are some people who order online or shop from the supermarket at the beginning of the month and come to me to borrow things on credit at the end of the month,” he says sadly.
KVVES has tried in the past to overcome the challenges posed by large chains and online commerce through various experiments, including a unified purchasing model for all stores in a particular region, but these efforts have failed.
“During the early days of the proliferation of online platforms, the committee thought of initiatives, but we realized that these required huge investment and were mostly impractical. The integrated procurement model was tried in some districts, but many traders did not cooperate with it. Home appliance traders have a group for bulk procurement,” says Peringamala Ramachandran, former KVVES functionary.
Ramachandran says, “There are strategic discussions going on among traders on how prices can be reduced. Since they all buy from wholesalers, they cannot sell without taking minimum profits, unlike big chains or supermarkets, which buy directly from companies at lower rates.”
Small traders who have moved into new businesses in recent years are also feeling the pinch, for example, owners of small mobile shops.
“Online sales as well as big chain outlets have cut into our business. Now customers mostly approach us for goods or service and not to buy new mobiles,” says Mohammed Shafi, who runs a mobile shop in Valancherry in Malappuram district.
Local fish sellers are another category whose business has declined due to the shift to online. The challenges posed by online fresh fish delivery services as well as supermarkets also include restrictions on their entry in many flat complexes. “Many vendors who have been working for a long time are either unemployed or transferring to other jobs,” says Pulluvila Stanley, general secretary of the All India Fishers and Fisheries Workers Federation.
A complaint went unheeded
The All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation had filed a complaint with the Competition Commission of India against the quick-commerce platform two years ago. According to the federation’s national president Dhairysheel Patil, not much has happened on the complaint, which highlights some of the major issues caused by accelerated commerce.
“We raised substantial points regarding deep discounting and predatory pricing in the market by instant-commerce platforms. Supporting documents and bills were given, especially on how they were manipulating prices. Products available in the general market and products provided through these platforms are often weighted differently. So the discounts customers receive are mostly perceived and not real. The Commission took no action on this. Right now, this is a worrying situation and could get worse, ” Patil warns.
A rare survival story
Amidst all the dismal stories of struggle for survival in the digital age, the story of how local cable operators in Kerala have managed to survive may hold lessons for other sectors too.
In 2007, when the winds of digitization began to blow across the entire cable television sector, local cable TV operators across Kerala formed Kerala Communicators Cable Limited under the aegis of the Cable TV Operators Association. The company had a cooperative structure with local cable TV operators as shareholders, sharing in the profits. The company launched digital cable TV services under the brand name Kerala Vision. In 2015, it launched broadband services and in the post-COVID years, an over-the-top (OTT) platform as a bundled service. Currently, more than 6,000 local cable operators across Kerala are part of this initiative.
This model is particularly interesting as local cable operators are gradually closing their shops across the country amid the proliferation of OTT platforms along with corporates starting operations. A study conducted by the All India Digital Cable Federation in 2025 estimates that 5.77 lakh people have lost jobs in the sector since 2018 due to the closure of 72,000 local cable operators and 900 multiple system operators.
Member of the Executive Committee of the Association. Vijayakrishnan says, “If we had not come together, we would not have survived in the digital age. Since all the local operators are shareholders, they get a share of the profits. Now we have an understanding with major streaming platforms like Hotstar that they will provide their services with us. In the last two years, about 10% of customers have given up their set-top box cable connections for broadband. But we are fully prepared to face the challenge.”
