Haat
हाटDaily essentials
The block market, brought fifteen kilometres
A household photographs the handwritten parchi it has always written, or says the list out loud, or ticks it off a screen. A shopkeeper in the block market reads it, weighs it out, prices each line and hands it to a driver from the customer's own panchayat.
How it works
Start to doorstep
- 1
Write the parchi as you always have
A handwritten list on a torn slip is how village shopping has worked for generations. Photograph it. Or hold the button and say it out loud. Or tick items off a screen if that suits you better.
- 2
It reaches the shop unchanged
The photograph and the voice note are the order. They go to the shopkeeper as they are — not as a machine's transcription of them.
- 3
The shopkeeper weighs and prices
They pack what they have, price each line as they weigh it, and mark anything they are out of. If nobody has everything, the order splits across shops without the household re-ordering.
- 4
A driver from your own panchayat
Collection is photographed against the order. The same e-rickshaw that runs the block's deliveries brings it to the door.
- 5
Pay now, from the wallet, or on udhaar
Credit between a shop and a household already exists in every village. Metagaon records it — what was owed, since when, due by when — and does not lend, guarantee or collect.
What is different
The part we got wrong first
- Order by parchi photo, by voice note, or from a list
- The shopkeeper prices each line as they weigh it — no catalogue to maintain
- Udhaar is recorded, not abolished
- One order can split across shops when nobody has everything
How we know
The photograph is the order. We built an extractor to read handwritten Devanagari into a tidy list, watched it be confidently wrong, and demoted it — the shopkeeper who has served this village for nine years reads their customer's handwriting better than the model does. It still runs, in shadow, scored against what the shop actually packed. Nobody sees it until it earns the right.
For the shopkeeper
The other side of the transaction
A marketplace that only works for the buyer is a subsidy with a logo. Every service was designed from the seller's constraints first — what they can realistically promise, and what they must not be asked to change.
- ✓Customers from villages they could never reach
- ✓No catalogue to build or maintain — price as you weigh
- ✓Their own trade patterns: what sells, who has stopped coming
- ✓Udhaar with a record behind it, and a repayment history
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