BENGALURU: Shivkumar JR, 34, has converted his 180 square foot kirana store, Sri Gayatri Coffee Works, into a virtual supermarket with the help of a kiosk next to his billing counter. Situated in Kolar Gold Fields, 100 km from Bengaluru, customers queue up to shop on a tablet device that displays a catalogue of products, taking Shivkumar’s help.Apart from coffee, he now sells gadgets, apparels and cosmetics, with backing from a startup. The tablet in the kiosk is a gateway for both shopkeepers and their customers in small towns and villages to buy products not available locally. Costing between Rs 8,000 andRs 15,000, the kiosks offer the experience of online shopping to people in rural areas who have poor or limited access to the Internet In Anantpur district, 400 km from Hyderabad, N Chandrababu, 28, now orders stocks online to increase his profit margins and has cut down the number of distributors by more than half."I don’t need distributors to bring me stocks because I can directly buy online and earn 10%-20% more," said Chandrababu. "We had 15 distributors six month ago, now we just have five, which we are maintaining because of good relations."These changes have been made possible because of companies such as IPay Tech India Pvt and StoreKing, which have a quasiecommerce model to reach customers in rural areas, where Internet connections are patchy and smartphones are few. The companies make product catalogues available offline, so there’s no delay on account of a slow Internet. After an order is placed and the payment made, the company dispatches the package to the retailer in 24 hours to 48 hours.The shopkeepers need to have a reasonably good Internet connection. To overcome connectivity issues, the StoreKing model requires bandwidth only during updates, while IPay has software that uses a minimal Internet connection.According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, about 92% of India’s retail market is unorganised and dominated by local shops owned by individuals. The retail sector is witnessing the dawn of a new era as ecommerce startups take frugal technology to rural India where big companies such as Flipkart and Amazon have little or no presence. Only 12% of the population in India uses the Internet, according to IPay."More than 50% of retail sales in India takes place in Tier-III or smaller towns and therefore we have a huge opportunity," said Sridhar Gundaiah, founder and CEO of StoreKing, an ecommerce website with a catalogue of over 1 lakh products and about 6,200 kiosks in south India. Its user interface is available in English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.Bengaluru-based StoreKing, founded in 2011, taps into Tier-III and smaller towns to help kirana store owners such as Shivkumar in Kolar Gold Fields and their customers to buy products not available locally.The company is expanding to Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu this year. In Chanubanda village, 330 km away from Hyderabad, a 240 square foot kirana store owner serves residents of nearby villages with the help of a kiosk installed by Hyderabad-based IPay, which also backed Chandrababu in Anantpur district."Here, very few people understand online shopping or ecommerce. All they know is if they purchase from my shop on this machine, they get huge discounts," said the owner, K Suresh.For Suresh, this has been a life changer. In the past seven months since tying up with IPay, he has reduced purchases from distributors by 25% and orders most commodities online, earning more. "I have to serve 15 villages here. I can’t always wait for two days to get the products. Hence, I order some necessary products like toothpastes shampoos and creams in bulk to keep the stock available," he said.Two-year-old IPay has installed 4,500 such kiosks in the rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.IPay, founded by serial entrepreneur Krishna Lakamsani, has roped in 4,500 retail stores in 850 towns and villages of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and has almost 2.8 million customers. It plans to expand into other southern and western states.So far, these companies have worked on a prepaid cash model, where customers make payment upfront while placing orders. Now, they are roping in payment companies to facilitate the use of digital money. IPay tied up with Ezetap early this year and is in talks with various e-wallet players. StoreKing will be tying up with Mobikwik, PayU and Paytm by the end of this year.