?Demonetisation turns cake makers' Christmas and New Year dull

Euromonitor International which is a market research organisation on consumer products, commercial industries, demographics trends and consumer lifestyles in India, has said that the industries with low income elasticity, such as hot drinks, home care and packaged food etc are less likely to be impacted adversely due to the short-term cash crunch.

They further said irrespective of the change in the income of the consumer, the relative change to the growth in the industry will be less than when compared to industries such as beauty and personal care, alcoholic drinks and soft drinks, which require more discretionary spending.

However, there is a pain point for traditional grocery retailers as majority of them are yet to adapt to digital payment mode. As per insights shared by Euromonitor, traditional retail still account for more than 90 percent of packaged food value sales in India. Janaki Padmanabhan, Country Manager, Bengaluru division, Euromonitor, said, "Since a big part of these retailers are not well equipped with card payment machines, it is likely that sales during this period will have gone to modern/internet retailers, which offer consumers the convenience of paying by card."

Additionally, Padmanabhan said essentials with lower income elasticity such as rice, edible oils and dairy products will be impacted less when compared with products such as ready meals and processed fruits and vegetables. However, she said the impact felt will also depend on the frequency of purchase of packaged food through various retail channels.

Jubilant FoodWorks, which operates Domino's Pizza outlets in India, has said that it will offer cashless payment option to all its customers on home deliveries.

In a BSE filing, Jubilant FoodWorks, said, "With this service, when customers call to order and choose to pay with a cashless option, they would be sent a link through sms on their mobile phone. This link would take them to payment gateway wherein they can pay with a debit card, credit card, net banking or a wallet."

Due to shortage of cash supply post demonetisation, most companies have been offering different cashless payment solutions to attract customers.

The last date for exchanging the old currencies in banks was 24th November, 2016 and the never ending lines outside ATMs and banks were still visible up until 24th's evening. As many people could not visit the bank due to some problems or the other, they were left with only few options such as exchanging the note where it is still accepted or simply buy things from the huge outlets.

Many outlets were still accepting the old currencies or some were at least lending the change if they were offered the old currency notes but since 22nd November, 2016, some outlets such as Mother Dairy and Safal have stopped taking the old currency notes.

The outlets declared that they would not accept the old currency notes unless the buyer buys stuff for full amount.

Most people complained that some Mother Dairy and Safal outlet assistants claimed they didn't have enough stock now-a-days to sell.

On the other hand majority of Mother Dairy and Safal outlet keepers said that the problem lay with the government, because it had not provided them enough in small currency in order to transact business with the old notes.

As per reports published in IANS, one of the employee said, "We accepted the old currency from people and jotted down the balance on slips on our own initiative. Many people don't understand that we are not getting loose cash to provide them change."

One of the Safal outlet manager, said: "As the demand for Safal goods has suddenly shot up due to the large-scale use of 1,000 and 500 notes, we are not getting enough stock."

Another Mother Dairy manager said on the condition of anonymity: "If all the 800 Mother Dairy booths and the over 350 Safal outlets in Delhi and NCR (National Capital Region) were given Rs 100 notes to exchange with the old currency coming from customers, there would have been no problem for ordinary people.