Billing software for Pune's shops.

Pune's grocery trade still follows a map drawn by the old city. Wholesale for fruit, vegetables, flowers, grains and other grocery items sits at the Shri Chhatrapati Shivaji Market Yard near Gultekdi, close to Swargate at the southern end of the city. It is run by an Agricultural Produce Market Committee elected under the Maharashtra Agricultural Produce Marketing Act of 1963, and it holds well over a thousand businesses. For a grocery or general store owner, this is where the big purchases of grains, pulses and spices usually happen. The market started at the old Mandai in Budhwar Peth and moved out to Gultekdi in 1980.

The Mandai did not go quiet when the wholesalers left. Mahatma Phule Mandai in Shukrawar Peth, built from 1882, is still described as the biggest retail vegetable market in Pune, with over five hundred stalls. A short walk away, Tulshibaug sells what a Maharashtrian kitchen and puja shelf need: cooking ingredients, cosmetics, household goods and puja items. It sits in the Peths of the old city and is reached from Bajirao Road, from Laxmi Road and from the road joining Shanipar to Shivaji Road.

For a shop counter, this chain of markets means stock arrives in bulk and in uneven lots. One trip to Market Yard brings back sacks of rice, dal and sugar that go into the godown first and reach the shelf a few kilos at a time. Bazaar IQ keeps display stock and storage stock as separate counts, so the owner can see what is on the shelf and what is still in the back room without opening every sack. Packaged goods scan by barcode from the phone camera, and an item that is not yet in the catalogue can still be billed, so the first day of use does not wait for a perfect product list.

Marathi is the working language at most Pune counters. The app runs in Marathi as well as Hindi, Gujarati and English, so a new helper can bill in the language they read most comfortably. Every GSTIN registered in Maharashtra begins with the state code 27. If the shop is a regular GST dealer, its bills come out as tax invoices listing HSN codes and splitting tax into CGST and SGST. Shops on the composition scheme get a Bill of Supply carrying the composition line the law requires, and shops not registered at all print a simple cash memo. Regular customers from the same lane or society often buy on udhaar, and the khata is part of billing itself, so a credit sale updates that customer's running balance the moment the bill is saved.