Product Design
The Pocket-Sized POS That Boosted Sales by 25%
How we built a phone-based POS app for Gram Factory’s small-format retailers — cutting checkout time by 35% and unlocking $96K in incremental revenue in just one quarter.
Year :
2021
Industry :
B2B Commerce
Client :
Gram Factory
Project Duration :
8 weeks
Reimagining POS for India’s Small Retailers
For Gram Factory’s neighbourhood partners, desktop POS terminals were bulky, expensive, and impossible to fit into cramped counters. Power cuts, unreliable internet, and manual ledgers created errors, queues, and lost sales. Since small retailers drove 90% of GMV, the opportunity was clear: create a pocket-sized POS that runs on any Android phone, handles peak-hour chaos, and grows business with real-time insights.
The Approach: Grounded in Field Research
I led shadowing sessions with 18 shopkeepers, 12 interviews, and 2 focus groups. The insights were sharp: queues averaged seven customers at peak, every extra 10 seconds at checkout dropped conversions by 2%, and nearly 40% of SKUs had no digital stock record. Owners loved the idea of a phone-based POS — they were already fluent with WhatsApp Business.
We translated these insights into design principles: familiar interactions, one-thumb flows, progressive disclosure, visible system status, and learn-by-doing onboarding.
What Changed
We built an MVP focused on speed and revenue impact. Key flows included OTP login, rapid customer capture, barcode-to-bill in seconds, dynamic pricing, returns/exchanges, real-time inventory with low-stock alerts, and a sales dashboard. The interface used a high-contrast bilingual design (EN/HIN) for inclusivity.
Field pilots revealed friction at the payment screen, which we fixed by auto-focusing on the amount field. Haptic feedback on scans reduced rescans by 18%. The app scaled to 100+ screens covering end-to-end store workflows.
The Impact
The numbers spoke for themselves:
Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
Checkout Time | 84 sec | 55 sec | -35% |
Monthly Sales / Store | $7.7K | $9.6K | +25% |
Stock-out Incidents | 42 | 23 | -45% |
User Satisfaction (CSAT) | 3.2 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 | +44% |
Why This Matters
Designing for India’s small retailers meant solving for constraints — no space, limited infrastructure, and fast-changing prices. By putting POS in the shopkeeper’s pocket, we gave them speed, accuracy, and confidence to sell more.
This case demonstrates how mobile-first design, grounded in field research and measurable impact, can turn operational bottlenecks into growth engines — a principle that applies to retail, food delivery, and any transaction-heavy ecosystem worldwide.
More Projects
Product Design
The Pocket-Sized POS That Boosted Sales by 25%
How we built a phone-based POS app for Gram Factory’s small-format retailers — cutting checkout time by 35% and unlocking $96K in incremental revenue in just one quarter.
Year :
2021
Industry :
B2B Commerce
Client :
Gram Factory
Project Duration :
8 weeks
Reimagining POS for India’s Small Retailers
For Gram Factory’s neighbourhood partners, desktop POS terminals were bulky, expensive, and impossible to fit into cramped counters. Power cuts, unreliable internet, and manual ledgers created errors, queues, and lost sales. Since small retailers drove 90% of GMV, the opportunity was clear: create a pocket-sized POS that runs on any Android phone, handles peak-hour chaos, and grows business with real-time insights.
The Approach: Grounded in Field Research
I led shadowing sessions with 18 shopkeepers, 12 interviews, and 2 focus groups. The insights were sharp: queues averaged seven customers at peak, every extra 10 seconds at checkout dropped conversions by 2%, and nearly 40% of SKUs had no digital stock record. Owners loved the idea of a phone-based POS — they were already fluent with WhatsApp Business.
We translated these insights into design principles: familiar interactions, one-thumb flows, progressive disclosure, visible system status, and learn-by-doing onboarding.
What Changed
We built an MVP focused on speed and revenue impact. Key flows included OTP login, rapid customer capture, barcode-to-bill in seconds, dynamic pricing, returns/exchanges, real-time inventory with low-stock alerts, and a sales dashboard. The interface used a high-contrast bilingual design (EN/HIN) for inclusivity.
Field pilots revealed friction at the payment screen, which we fixed by auto-focusing on the amount field. Haptic feedback on scans reduced rescans by 18%. The app scaled to 100+ screens covering end-to-end store workflows.
The Impact
The numbers spoke for themselves:
Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
Checkout Time | 84 sec | 55 sec | -35% |
Monthly Sales / Store | $7.7K | $9.6K | +25% |
Stock-out Incidents | 42 | 23 | -45% |
User Satisfaction (CSAT) | 3.2 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 | +44% |
Why This Matters
Designing for India’s small retailers meant solving for constraints — no space, limited infrastructure, and fast-changing prices. By putting POS in the shopkeeper’s pocket, we gave them speed, accuracy, and confidence to sell more.
This case demonstrates how mobile-first design, grounded in field research and measurable impact, can turn operational bottlenecks into growth engines — a principle that applies to retail, food delivery, and any transaction-heavy ecosystem worldwide.
More Projects
Product Design
The Pocket-Sized POS That Boosted Sales by 25%
How we built a phone-based POS app for Gram Factory’s small-format retailers — cutting checkout time by 35% and unlocking $96K in incremental revenue in just one quarter.
Year :
2021
Industry :
B2B Commerce
Client :
Gram Factory
Project Duration :
8 weeks
Reimagining POS for India’s Small Retailers
For Gram Factory’s neighbourhood partners, desktop POS terminals were bulky, expensive, and impossible to fit into cramped counters. Power cuts, unreliable internet, and manual ledgers created errors, queues, and lost sales. Since small retailers drove 90% of GMV, the opportunity was clear: create a pocket-sized POS that runs on any Android phone, handles peak-hour chaos, and grows business with real-time insights.
The Approach: Grounded in Field Research
I led shadowing sessions with 18 shopkeepers, 12 interviews, and 2 focus groups. The insights were sharp: queues averaged seven customers at peak, every extra 10 seconds at checkout dropped conversions by 2%, and nearly 40% of SKUs had no digital stock record. Owners loved the idea of a phone-based POS — they were already fluent with WhatsApp Business.
We translated these insights into design principles: familiar interactions, one-thumb flows, progressive disclosure, visible system status, and learn-by-doing onboarding.
What Changed
We built an MVP focused on speed and revenue impact. Key flows included OTP login, rapid customer capture, barcode-to-bill in seconds, dynamic pricing, returns/exchanges, real-time inventory with low-stock alerts, and a sales dashboard. The interface used a high-contrast bilingual design (EN/HIN) for inclusivity.
Field pilots revealed friction at the payment screen, which we fixed by auto-focusing on the amount field. Haptic feedback on scans reduced rescans by 18%. The app scaled to 100+ screens covering end-to-end store workflows.
The Impact
The numbers spoke for themselves:
Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
Checkout Time | 84 sec | 55 sec | -35% |
Monthly Sales / Store | $7.7K | $9.6K | +25% |
Stock-out Incidents | 42 | 23 | -45% |
User Satisfaction (CSAT) | 3.2 / 5 | 4.6 / 5 | +44% |
Why This Matters
Designing for India’s small retailers meant solving for constraints — no space, limited infrastructure, and fast-changing prices. By putting POS in the shopkeeper’s pocket, we gave them speed, accuracy, and confidence to sell more.
This case demonstrates how mobile-first design, grounded in field research and measurable impact, can turn operational bottlenecks into growth engines — a principle that applies to retail, food delivery, and any transaction-heavy ecosystem worldwide.