Digital lifestyle in Namma Bengaluru
Just like every mega-city, a lot of things has gone worse in the city since I was there 3 years ago. Infrastructure is being stretched to its limits, more lakes have dried up, there are way more vehicles on the road causing crazy traffic jams and too much construction everywhere.
But all this has significantly changed the lifestyle of people. E-commerce and IT driven services bring literally everything to the doorstep — food, clothes, handymen, tailors, groceries, courier services and even your own delivery boy to send packages across the city. All of this gets done via mobile Apps. Fascinating! Especially after coming from sub-urban town in Germany.
Its not the prevalence of IT services that’s so fascinating. It’s the reach and coverage that is. The kind of services covered are really addressing everyday challenges faced by people. Cheap smart phones and data has transformed lives of everyone I interacted with — be it the house help, a street side food vendor or any white collared professional.
- Braving the traffic for almost 2 hrs, I went out to buy curtains for my apartment — to a place I would get ready made curtains. One of the shops had really good fabrics, but they would need to stitch them for me. I had no energy or interest to drive back all that way another day to pick them up. When I expressed this disinterest to the shopkeeper the lady promptly said, “don’t worry. You don’t have to come all the way. We will Dunzo it to you.”
Who said, technology kills brick and mortar shops? This lady was leveraging technology very well.
- Our refrigerator was delivered by the vendor. Payment was done online. But I didn’t know, I needed to pay installation charges too. I didn’t have enough cash at home to pay. The service technician promptly said, “don’t worry madam. Just do Paytm/Google Pay.”
I was the uneducated one here — I had no idea how Paytm worked and I had no Google Pay account. :-(
Paytm has just revolutionised payments in India. Paytm is accepted everywhere — autorickshaws, Uber, street side vendors, vegetable sellers, food delivery services…basically almost every service is integrated to Paytm.
WhatsApp for communication, Paytm/Google Pay for payments, Zomato/Squiggy/Uber Eats/ Foodpanda…for food deliveries, Dunzo for sending packages/stuff across the city, Uber/Ola for cabs or autorickshaws for commuting, Big Basket/Amazon for groceries and everything else — get all these ‘essential’ Apps on the phone and almost everything gets done with a few clicks.
(Just don’t loose that phone!)
On one hand, I was experiencing all this and one day I walked into a Nationalized (government) Bank — they haven’t even updated my Dad’s data in their system since the last 5 years. The records are all in dilapidated paper files. They wanted me to bring xerox copies of some more papers, self attested, fill a form, sign it and courier it to a specific branch because their systems were not integrated across different branches. My tolerance for the lack of digitisation was very low that day. I of course sent them all the requested papers using Dunzo. I called the Bank Manager to inform him about my package arriving him via Dunzo — he had absolutely no idea what that was :-)
What a wide spectrum of digitisation. This bank was clearly very far behind to suit the needs of the present day consumer behaviour. At the bank, I had looked around and saw only elderly people around. What was annoying for me was probably a blessing for them — there was still a bank that didn’t force them to transact via an App/online portal. That was a big reason my Dad still came to this bank. Updating his ‘passbook’ was still a task he got done every time he came to the bank. While he waited for this to get done, he would chat with the bank manager who had become his friend over the years. Sigh!
Hope the balance stays so nobody is left out in the race.