No more toffee instead of chhutta: Know how UPI has wrecked India’s candy biz

Shopkeepers used to “shamelessly swap toffees for loose cash” before the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “Toffee vanished off the picture” with the emergence of digital payments.

You may have experienced situations where your local kirana, supermarket, or dairy store gives you back toffees or chocolates rather than returning Re 1 or 2 coins or loose change, often known as “chhutta” in India. That was a cunning move that benefited the candy manufacturers as well as the shop owners. The shops used to make a respectable profit on each packet of candy sold, and the ploy also kept toffee sales afloat.

UPI, a digital payment interface, is steadily bringing about change, nevertheless. The creator of GrowthX, Abhishek Patil, published a piece on LinkedIn detailing how the UPI destroyed the Indian sweets industry.

According to Patil, “nearly all significant firms claimed astonishing growth & future prospects back in early 2010s, including Mondelez, Mars, Nestle, Perfetti Van Melle, Parle & ITC.”

Before UPI, shops used to “shamelessly barter toffees for loose currency,” according to Patil, who was describing what had actually changed in the past ten years.

As many buyers in studies accepted, these small amounts over days did wind up becoming large sums of money. All of this was stopped by UPI. People paid the precise amount required without room for negotiation, which finally consumed the daily toffee sales.

Everyone wanted to use contactless payments during the Covid-19 outbreak, according to Patil, and as digital payments proliferated, “toffee fell off the picture.”

In his essay, he said that “no chocolate (toffee) manufacturer would ever think about banking items as their rival.”

It should be mentioned that in September, payments made through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) reached a significant milestone of Rs 11 lakh crore. Volume-wise, 678 crore transactions were completed on the platform during the month.

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