From 10-paisa delivery to quick commerce

THE year was 1979. I was a 10-year-old boy in Hoshiarpur, a city where traffic was so scarce in those days that even a cow crossing the road was considered a bottleneck. Our schoolteachers had drilled one thing into our heads: “Look right, then left, then right again before crossing the road.” What they forgot to add was the most important part — “If there’s a truck coming, don’t cross at all!” But well, those were simpler times.

Right across the road from our house was a little shop selling books and magazines. It was my sister’s paradise. A boarder at a Jalandhar college, she was a voracious reader. She devoured Hindi novels by Rajhans — the kind of books my father referred to as “useless”. Later in life, I discovered that many Bollywood blockbusters were actually born out of Rajhans’ stories. Back then, though, all I cared about was how my sister used me as her personal delivery boy.

Here’s how it worked: novels cost about Rs 5 or Rs 10, but you could ‘rent’ them for 25 or 50 paise a day. My sister would bribe me with 10 paise (25, if she was generous) to sneak across the road, get her a book and smuggle it back without dad noticing. Why the secrecy? Because novels were forbidden in our house. According to my father, we were only supposed to read our schoolbooks. Anything else — especially rasaalas (those juicy novels) — was practically contraband.

And that was my first taste of what we now call quick commerce. I was a one-boy delivery startup, running high-risk missions with high rewards: 10 paise and a sense of adventure.

In the process, I developed a love for reading. Since English comics were rare in that shop, I immersed myself in Hindi pocket books and comics. My favourites? Lot-Pot, Nandan, Champak… and, of course, the detective series by SC Bedi featuring Rajan-Iqbal — the desi detective duo modelled on Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t realise it then, but all that reading honed my Hindi so well that years later, at Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, I was declared a scholar in the subject. Imagine that — thanks to smuggled novels and undercover missions for my sister!

Looking back now, I can’t help but laugh. The things that once felt like little adventures — dodging dad’s stern eyes, racing across the road with a rented book and pocketing my “delivery fee” — were actually my early lessons in entrepreneurship. I was doing hyper-local delivery decades before apps like Blinkit or Zepto even existed!

Today, we can order anything with a tap on our phones, and companies call it “innovation”. But deep down, I know the truth: quick commerce isn’t new. It’s just my 1979 side hustle in a fancy new avatar. The only difference? Back then, the payment wasn’t through UPI — it was with a 10-paisa coin and a promise not to tell dad. Honestly, I think I preferred it that way.