Dumka's market, now on your phone

Everyone in Dumka has a shop they trust. The kirana uncle who knows what your family buys every month. The sweet shop you go to before guests arrive. The fruit seller who keeps the good ones aside when he sees you coming.

None of that has to change.

What changes is the walk in the afternoon sun, the wait at the counter, and the phone call that nobody picks up because the shop is full.

This month UrbanStall opens in Dumka. It is an app on your phone. Shops from our own town show what they have, you choose, and the order comes to your home. We started in Thane last year. Dumka is the second city, and it is the one closest to us.

What "digital" means in Dumka

When people hear the words digital transformation, they think of big offices in Bangalore or Mumbai. Glass buildings, laptops everywhere, English words nobody at home uses.

That is not what we mean.

In Dumka it means something small and useful. A shop that only its own street knew about can now be found by a family on the other side of town. A working couple who reach home late can still get atta, oil, and sabzi without running to the market before it shuts. A shopkeeper can read an order clearly on a phone instead of on a paper slip that gets lost under the counter.

The shop stays the same shop. The owner stays the owner. The prices are his. We are not a warehouse and we are not a new shop. We are the road between you and the shops you already have.

The counter does not change. The orders also come on the phone.

How to order

It is simple, and if it is not simple for you, tell us and we will fix it.

1. Install UrbanStall on your phone.
2. Choose Dumka as your city.
3. Open a shop, the way you would walk into one. Look at what it has.
4. Add what you need and place the order.
5. Someone brings it to your door.

That is all. You do not need to be good with phones. If you can send a WhatsApp message, you can order on UrbanStall.

Think of the days it helps most. When it is raining and nobody wants to step out. When someone at home is unwell and you cannot leave them alone. When guests are coming in an hour and the sweets are not bought yet. On those days the market can come to you.

Why only the shops of our own town

Big shopping apps send things from a warehouse in some other city. The money you spend leaves Dumka the same day. The shop down your road loses one more customer, and one day it shuts.

We did not want to build that.

On UrbanStall, the stalls are Dumka's own. When you order, the money goes to a Dumka shopkeeper. The rider who brings it lives here. The whole thing stays in the town.

There is another problem we were tired of. One app for food. One for groceries. One for medicines. One for something else. Every app wants your number, every app sends you messages, and most of them do not even deliver to Dumka. We wanted one app for the town, with the town's own shops inside it.

The shop stays the same shop. The phone just makes the road between you and it shorter.

If you run a shop

You do not have to be a big shop to be on UrbanStall. A small kirana, a sweet shop, a fruit stall, a mill, a tiffin service at home. If people in Dumka buy from you, you belong here.

Tell us your shop's name and what you sell. We set it up with you. Once it is checked, it opens on the app and people across Dumka can see it. You keep running your shop the way you always have. The orders are just one more door for customers to walk in.

Some shopkeepers have asked us, will this take away my regular customers? It will not. Your regular customers still know you. What changes is that new people find you, people who never came down your lane.

The person at your door is from Dumka too.

The person at your door

An order is not done when you press the button. It is done when it reaches your hand.

That is why delivery matters to us more than anything else in the app. The riders are from Dumka. They know the lanes, the landmarks, and the house behind the temple that no map can find. When something goes wrong, and in the first weeks some things will, you are talking to people from your own town, not a call centre far away.

Why we started this in Dumka

Lawazia is a technology company with its heart in Dumka. We believe a town like ours should not have to wait ten years for things that big cities already take for granted. The shops are here. The people are here. The phones are already in every pocket. What was missing was something built for this town, by people who understand it.

We also believe good work should not always mean leaving home. If a town can build its own technology and run it itself, its young people have one more reason to stay.

UrbanStall is the first step. It is not a finished thing. It will get better every week because people in Dumka will tell us what is wrong with it.

What we ask from you

Try one order. Just one.

If it was good, tell your neighbour. If it was bad, tell us, and tell us what to fix. And if you know a shopkeeper who should be on UrbanStall, tell them about it, or tell us about them.

This is Dumka's own app. We want it to feel that way.

Sandeep Jaiswal, Lawazia