The serpentine queues being witnessed outside liquor stores across the country have given Chennai-based start-up HipBar the perfect opportunity to make a push for its payment gateway service built for alcohol retail. Getting patrons to pay for their favourite liquor online and picking it up at the store at an appointed time will regulate queues at several wine shops as well, HipBar said.

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"We were running our payment gateway service across liquor shops in Goa, Rajasthan, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu until the lockdown was imposed across the country,” said Prasanna Natarajan, Founder and CEO, HipBar. According to the HipBar model, a customer can pay for the alcohol of their choice online and then pick the order at a designated time from a merchandiser, thereby reducing the time within the confines of a liquor store.

“Now that liquor stores are opening, we aren’t sure of the availability of our merchandisers at these outlets, and will need some time to re-automate the entire process of online payments and online pick-up,” Prasanna added, “We should be able to re-start operations in a week to 10 days.”

Apart from re-starting its online payment service for liquor, HipBar is in talks with state governments to consider the possibility of allowing home-delivery of alcohol. Since the COVID-19 lockdown, the governments of West Bengal and Chhattisgarh are considering home-delivery of liquor to battle overcrowding outside wine shops.

“We are actively considering getting into the home-delivery business in West Bengal and Chhattisgarh,” said Prasanna, “We are trying to get the governments of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu to come on board as far as our proposed home-delivery business is concerned.”

It isn’t the first time that HipBar has pitched for regulated home-delivery of alcohol as a way to drink more responsibly. However, regulatory hurdles surrounding home-delivery of alcohol have persisted and come in the way of this proposal. With emphasis on social distancing here to stay, the start-up believes that there could be some hope left for regulated home-delivery of alcohol.

First Published:May 4, 2020 9:38 PM IST