Soap, snacks and packaged food

The trade

How this trade really works

From the factory to the customer, each person in the chain wants something different. Most of what goes wrong comes from the gaps between them.

The company

Makes the soap, the namkeen, the biscuits, the packaged atta. It wants every month to close with a bigger figure than last year, and it measures that figure at the factory gate.

The big wholesaler for the region

Buys in full trucks and feeds the distributors in his part of the state. He wants a steady margin and the best schemes, and he wants to hold as little slow stock as he can.

The distributor

Holds stock in his godown, gives credit to the shops and runs beat salesmen on fixed days. He carries many brands. He wants goods that sell without effort and claims that are settled on time.

The beat salesman

Visits the same lane of kirana shops on the same day each week. He takes orders, collects some old dues and talks up whatever item has a scheme running this month.

The kirana shop

A small shop with a counter, a few shelves and a ceiling-high stack of cartons. He buys small quantities often, on credit, and keeps what his regular customers ask for by name.

The household

The mother who sends a child for a small pack of soap and a packet of namkeen. She buys what she knows, and in small packs when money is tight before the month's pay comes.

The last days of the month decide everything

Your area officer has a target. In the last week he calls every distributor and asks for one more order. A special scheme appears. The distributor takes the stock because the scheme is good and the officer is a friend. Your books show a strong month. The distributor's godown now holds goods that his salesmen will struggle to move for weeks.

A scheme fills godowns, not kitchens

Buy so many cartons and get some free. The distributor takes the free goods and keeps the extra margin. Some of it reaches the shop as a small discount. Very little of it reaches the family. Your discount scheme made distributors take stock. It did not make customers buy.

Small packs carry the villages

In a village kirana, the small pack and the sachet do most of the work. The family buys for today, not for the month. The big family pack sells in the town, in the colony shop near the market. When you send the same mix of packs to every area, the village distributor sits on big packs and runs short of small ones.

Damaged and old goods come back late

Rats get into a carton. A stack gets crushed in the monsoon damp. A batch of namkeen goes soft and stale on a shelf that gets the afternoon sun. The shop gives it back to the salesman. The distributor piles it in a corner and files a claim. Your claim settles months later. By then the distributor has decided that your brand is trouble.

The distributor sells cheap before the date, and spoils your price

When he sees a lot of stock getting close to its date, the distributor does not wait for your claim. He passes it to a wholesaler in the market at a deep cut. That cheap stock then reaches shops in another distributor's area. That distributor complains to you that his market has been ruined.

Credit squeezes the distributor from both sides

You want payment before the truck leaves. The kirana shop pays the distributor when it pleases, often weeks later. The distributor is the bank in the middle. He is not dishonest when he refuses a new item. He is protecting his money from being stuck in one more thing that may not move.

Festival stock has a short life

Before Diwali, gift packs of namkeen, sweets and dry fruits fly off the shelves. The day after Bhai Dooj, nobody wants them. Whatever the distributor took in that last festival order now sits in his godown until next year, or goes cheap. The same happens on a smaller scale after Holi, Rakhi and Eid.

Harvest money moves village demand

In farming areas, shops do well after the harvest is sold and slow down in the lean weeks before it. When the monsoon cuts off kaccha roads, the salesman cannot reach some villages at all. A distributor who looks weak in those weeks may only be waiting for the roads to open.

Where the money quietly goes

What you cannot see today, and what it costs you

You see deliveries, and call them sales

Your figures stop at the distributor's godown. What you call a sale is not a sale. It is only a delivery. You plan next month's production on a figure that includes stock no family has bought yet.

You learn about slow stock when it comes back

You do not know which pack is lying with which distributor until it returns as a claim. By then it is too late to move it, cut its price in time or stop making more of it.

You cannot tell a weak area from a weak distributor

When sales fall in one district, you do not know if the shops there stopped buying or if your distributor stopped selling. You change the distributor. The new one has the same problem, because the problem was the pack mix, not the man.

A new launch looks good for the wrong reason

A new flavour of namkeen goes out to every distributor in the first month. The figure looks strong. Nobody can tell you whether the shops sold it again in the second month, or whether it is lying behind the old stock on the shelf.

You pay for schemes without knowing what they did

You ran a big scheme before Diwali. Did families buy more, or did distributors simply take their usual Diwali stock earlier and cheaper? Without the distributor's own sales to shops, you cannot tell, so you run the same scheme next year.

Your own factory runs short at the worst moment

In the busy season, the packing film or the cartons run out just when the orders peak. The line stops for days. You find out when the floor supervisor comes to your cabin, not weeks earlier when you could have ordered more.

A season, the way it usually goes

The story you already know

It is the last week of October in a namkeen factory outside Indore. Diwali is close. The owner has told his officers to push hard, and they do. Every distributor across Malwa and into the towns near the Rajasthan border takes a festival order. The gift boxes go out in full trucks. The month closes as the best in the company's history.

Diwali passes. Then Bhai Dooj. In the first week of November, a distributor in Ratlam calls the officer. His godown still holds a tall stack of gift boxes. He also says his beat salesmen have been asking for the small packs of plain sev for weeks and he has none. The officer promises to look into it. The factory has already turned the line back to gift boxes for the wedding season.

By January, the gift boxes start coming back as claims, stale and crushed. Some of them never come back. They turn up in a wholesale market in another town, sold far below the printed price, and that town's distributor is furious. The owner looks at his October figure and still believes it was a great month. Nobody can show him otherwise.

What you can now decide

Decisions you could not make before

Plan production on what families bought

When you can see the distributor's sales to shops, you stop planning on deliveries. You make less of the pack that is already lying in godowns, and more of the one that is running out on the beat. The factory stops building stock that will come back as claims.

Move stock before it gets old, instead of taking it back

You see a large pile of a namkeen lying with one distributor while his neighbour sells the same pack quickly. You ask the first to pass it to the second. Move it, do not make it. Same goods, no new cost, and it reaches a family before it goes stale.

Judge a scheme by what happened after it

After a scheme, look at what the distributors sold to shops in the following weeks. If shop sales rose, the scheme worked. If only your deliveries rose and shop sales stayed flat, you paid for stock to move from your godown to his. Next season, you know which kind to run.

Send each area the packs it really buys

When the village distributors sell mostly small packs and the town distributors sell family packs, you stop sending the same mix to all of them. Each distributor gets the packs his shops ask for. Fewer packs sit, and fewer go cheap.

Decide on a new launch by its second month

Watch whether shops kept buying a new item from distributors after the first fill. If they did, push it wider. If they did not, stop before you have filled every godown in the state with something nobody comes back for.

Cut the festival order to the right size

Look at how much festival stock each distributor still held after last Diwali, and how long it lay there. Give each one an honest festival order this year. Less is left in godowns after Bhai Dooj, less goes to the market at a cut, and fewer claims reach you in January.

Order packing material before the rush

When the warning shows that cartons will run short at the current pace, you order them weeks before the season. The line keeps running when the orders are heaviest.

Where you get ahead

Where your competitor keeps losing

Your distributors stay with you

A distributor who gets a full billing and accounts setup at your cost, and whose other brands you can never see, has a reason to prefer your goods. When an officer from another company comes asking him to take a bigger order, he has his own figures in front of him and a company that already sends him what sells.

You fix a district while others are still guessing

Other companies learn about a weak area from the next review meeting, months later. You see it in the weeks it happens, and you know whether to change the pack mix, help the distributor, or look at the shops. You act in the same season, not the next one.

Your price holds in the market

When your stock is moved before it gets old, less of it is dumped cheap in a wholesale market. Shops see your goods at the right price. Your distributors stop fighting each other over cheap stock crossing their areas. A clean price is something a shopkeeper notices.

The same season, with Vyavora

The story, told again

The next October, the same factory outside Indore prepares for Diwali. This time the owner opens one screen before deciding the festival order. He sees how much of last year's gift stock each distributor held after the festival and how long it lay. The Ratlam distributor had a large pile. A distributor near Ujjain had almost none and had run short.

So the gift boxes go out differently. Ratlam gets a smaller order. Ujjain gets more. The owner also notices that across the villages, the small packs of plain sev and bhujia sold steadily right through the festival, and that several village distributors were close to running out. He keeps a line running on small packs through October instead of turning it all over to gift boxes.

In the second week after Diwali, one distributor still holds more gift boxes than his shops will take. The screen shows it. The officer calls a distributor in a nearby town who has sold out, and the boxes are moved across before the wedding season begins. In January, the claims pile is small. The month that looks good in the books is now a month that was good in kitchens too.

Why the others agree to it

Everyone in the chain is better off

For the distributor

He gets a complete Vyavora of his own, usually paid for by you. It does his GST billing, his stock, his accounts, and tells him what each kirana shop owes him. He can send reminders to shops on WhatsApp. Your price list arrives in it by itself and stays current, and he can order from you against it and pay online. You see only your own goods in his business. His other brands, his buying prices, his profit, his shop list and his bank stay his alone.

For the kirana shop that bills on Vyavora

A bigger kirana that already bills on a computer can bill on Vyavora too. It keeps its own stock, credit and accounts. Your goods then show up one step further, in what it sold over its own counter, and nothing else of its business reaches you.

For your own area officers

An officer can stop guessing which distributor needs help. He can walk into a godown knowing which of your packs are moving and which have been lying, and talk about the right thing instead of asking for one more order.

What this does not do

Vyavora shows you only the distributors who bill on Vyavora. If a distributor keeps his old billing software, his sales to shops stay hidden. There is no back door into his computer, and no figures are bought from anyone. It does not track expiry dates or batches. It shows you how long each pack has been lying, which tells you long before the date that it will not sell in time. It does not plan your salesmen's beats or tell you where they are. It does not tell you in advance how much will sell next season. It shows you clearly what sold this season, and the decision stays yours.

Straight answers

Questions people in this trade ask

Will my distributors agree to this?

Most agree once they understand the line we hold. You see your own goods in his business and nothing else. You do not see his other brands, his buying prices, his profit, his shop list or his bank. And he gets full billing, stock and accounts for himself, usually at your cost.

Can I see what my distributor sells of other companies' goods?

No. Never. That is the promise that makes distributors join, and we keep it.

Can I see what the kirana shop sold?

Only if that shop also bills on Vyavora. Then you see what it sold of your goods over its counter. Most small kirana shops do not bill on a computer, so for them you see what the distributor sold to them.

Does Vyavora track expiry dates?

No. It shows how long each of your packs has been lying with each distributor. For snacks and food, that tells you early which stock is heading for a claim, while there is still time to move it.

Do my distributors have to type in all their old records?

No. Vyavora reads the files a business already keeps on its computer, the sheets of figures and the scanned bills. Nobody sits and types in years of old records.

Can my distributors order from me through it?

Yes. Your product and price list sits inside each distributor's own Vyavora and stays current. He places his order against it and can pay online.

What if one distributor is on Vyavora and his neighbour is not?

You see the one who is on it, fully. The neighbour stays as he is today, where you only know what you sent him. Many companies start with their best distributors and add the rest as they see the benefit.

The stock you pushed at month end is still sitting in a godown. It has not reached a single kitchen.