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By going the digital way fish vendors can develop a “digital marketing
strategy”, taking orders on WhatsApp and calls, home delivery of fish and
accepting digital payment which will help rebuild a strong customer base
and increase business turnover.
6. How to prepare businesses for the future?
Regulatory frameworks
The smaller businesses in the unorganised sector can neither be
regulated nor protected by the state. De facto it is the customers who
regulate these businesses. If they need to survive, these businesses need
to adapt to the demands of the customer and respond to the ecosystem.
Therefore, there is a need for a regulatory framework to provide legitimacy
to these businesses and clear and simple “do’s and don’ts”. There is a need
to enable digital interface for issuing licenses to such businesses. E.g home
chef ’s, chat and bhel sellers, flower and garland sellers. Many a time the
uncertain state of their existence due to the discretionary interpretation of
the state across time and geography or lack of any regulatory framework
for such a business may lead to their closure. Amongst others temporary
disruption to business can be caused due to natural disasters like floods,
law and order problems, theft leading to loss of partial/ complete capital
base. The regulatory framework should be based on the reality of the
society’s practices and traditions of using these businesses for fulfilling
their needs which is native to society for millennia, not on the ideological
economic framework of policy makers. E.g fruit and vegetable vendors,
neera and coconut water sellers, cobblers, alteration tailors. This factor
should be kept in mind considering the experience and difficulty in
creating productive organised sector employment in India over the past
few decades and the challenges that will come due to automation in the
coming decades. We should adopt the global best practices from nations
like Bangkok and Singapore which have proper regulated hawker markets.
Financial resilience
There are a number of government schemes related to health, insurance
and food security which can make the entrepreneurs more secure
and thereby the businesses more resilient. The work flow of the credit
disbursal should be designed in such a way that these entrepreneurs are
registered and capable of availing the benefits of the schemes as and when
need arises. Suitable incentives can be given to banks and other financial
institutions for deepening this outreach.
Technology adoption
Adopting the use of digital technology for acquisition of new customers

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