In the 10-day period immediately after ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes were no longer deemed legal tender across India, hyper-local deals marketplace Little claims it saw transactions on its platform surge by two times the average number of deals on a regular day.

As Little’s hyper-local model drives footfall to F&B outlets, in the days of cash shortage following demonetisation, consumers seem to have found it convenient to spend digital money.

Sumit Agarwal, Chief Operating Officer, Little says: “We observed the geo-location feature on our app being used a lot, although this need not be only due to demonetisation.

“Our app displays deals in a consumer’s vicinity, and that’s typically 100-300 metres or walking distance for the consumer. Being able to spot deals on Little may have helped consumers in the days of cash shortage, especially for lunch and dinner spends which saw a 30 per cent spike on our platform in those 10 days.”

When new ₹2,000 notes began to be dispatched, lower denomination change was not easily available in many parts of the country. However, Little found that its cash-back schemes helped people use the ₹20 or ₹30 they received in cash-back to pay for a beverage rather than dip into their own pockets; this also helped merchants gain with small-denomination orders.

Little claims to have thouands of small merchants on its platform.

“We have small shops as well as popular urban F&B brands, on our platform,” says Agarwal.

Partly funded by Paytm, Little claims more than 95 per cent of its consumers pay for F&B via the m-wallet. Agarwal adds that Cafe Coffee Day deals doubled in the week after demonetisation, food-and-beverage deals saw the most consumption followed by movies, and consumer app downloads saw a 3x increase in the same period.

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