A committee of citizens formed in a specific locality to police the local streets, or keep them clean, is a hyperlocal concept. For example Hyperlocal refers to all businesses in your vicinity, the nearby General merchant, Restaurant, Market, Mall, and other products and service providers. Let’s say when you want to enjoy street food, do you like to have it from your trusted vendor near your home, or would you wait to travel to a far off area or even a distant town to have it, howsoever popular that would be? Do you buy vegetables grown in your area as opposed to imported ones? Do you patronize a grocer in your locality? A fruit/vegetable seller? A restaurant? Do you call them and avail of home delivery? These are examples of consumption in a hyperlocal market.

Why do it?

Coming back to old times, hyperlocal was home-delivered, a saree seller would bring his bunch of sarees door to door and the ladies of the house could shop at leisure without stepping out. (Remember DDLJ?)

Mobile start-ups have capitalized on this age-old human behavior and used it to create businesses which didn’t exist before, even when Hyperlocal has been the way of life.

The lure of this idea is simple – in a country like India, with a large population base, hyperlocal markets are not only large but HUGE in size. And in its comparison, the online shopping remains a minnow. Every day, hundreds of millions of people shop locally, compared to a few lacs who shop on e-commerce sites. As a business, the start-up offers you an app and a delivery mechanism that facilitate ordering. They do not need to change your behavior, which for a business is a time-consuming, costly, and difficult process. They simply ride on your existing behavior, and in the process earn money. Sounds like easy, smart logic, doesn’t it?

There Are Several Additional Benefits Of Hyperlocal Startups, For Both End Consumers And Communities

1. They keep local businesses healthy and flourishing. Earlier there was a fear that Kirana stores would be over-run by big retail, now Kirana stores need not lag behind in the technology race!
2. They reduce the cost and effort for small businesses to come online. A local business need not undertake to build an app or re-engineer their processes to suit the e-commerce business. They simply need to enlist with one or more of the many hyperlocal businesses.
3. They encourage local entrepreneurship and creativity as discovery by potential customers becomes easier and competition does not come from not daunting international/ national brands and chains, but other similarly sized local businesses.
4. For service-oriented businesses like repair and plumbing, it forces high-quality standards and greater transparency in pricing as consumers can compare, evaluate, and select the best.