Mumbai: Festive season has fetched much-needed respite to the micro, small and medium enterprise sector. These sectors have witnessed faster recovery, particularly the sale of sweets, reveals data gathered by OkCredit, the pioneers in digital bookkeeping apps which are fast becoming a new rage among unorganized retailers and traders in India.
Basis the behavior of users, OkCredit gathered data on how the businesses performed during the festive season. According to the data, the sale of sweets has gone up by 60% during this Diwali compared to the year 2019. This indicates the fervor associated with the festival overcame the fear of pandemic. For other items such as rangoli and lamps, the sale has been the same as that of the previous year.
OkCredit data indicates that the growth in transactions on the app was led by Kirana and small businesses. These contributed to nearly 55% of this growth even as the overall transactions on the app during the festive period accounted for 12% percent of the transactions for the year 2020.
OkCredit also witnessed an increase in ticket size for jewelry by 16% from the preceding months during the festive season. This is in sharp contrast to the overall trend of shrinkage in ticket size by 22% in general and increases in the number of transactions by 47% on OkCredit app during Diwali/ festive season this year in comparison to the same period last year. This signals that merchants are lending smaller amounts which can be accounted for the shrinkage in overall economic activity.
On the business transaction side, the transaction bookkeeping value for OkCredit rose by 13% during this year’s festive season/week when compared with 2019. The company also witnessed the highest growth in terms of new merchant addition in Karnataka indicating a growth of 14% during the festive season.
Diwali is known as the end of the financial year with the second day of Diwali marking the beginning of the next fiscal year. OkCredit, during the festive season, settled over 2 million accounts with 80% of accounts being settled in Tier 3 cities. This highlights empowering role modern bookkeeping solution is playing and the trend of micro-retail players from small towns and hinterlands embracing digital bookkeeping solutions more than ever before, as it makes their book-keeping task simpler, digitized and secure.
According to Harsh Pokharna, Co-founder and CEO, OkCredit, “The overall growth story of digital bookkeeping industry has been very bullish this festive season with actual transaction figures surpassing our expectations comfortably. This shows how comfortable businesses have become with online bookkeeping even in this pandemic hit year. One clear lesson from this festive season is that digital bookkeeping has become more mainstream than ever and it has proven that with the right technology and features the value proposition of digital bookkeeping is immensely powerful.”
The world is by all accounts gradually reeling out from the pandemic that brought almost the entire population to a halt for months. The good news is that businesses are finally beginning to look up after a bleak streak that lasted months on end thanks to the festive season which is an extremely hectic time for retailers in India.
