When Chandrashekar Pasarge, owner of Srishti Drishti Saree Centre, began giving away saris for a rupee each, fellow vendors thought he would go bankrupt. He has surprised them, by buying a second shop, bigger than the first and doubling the number of workers. What is more, he has expanded the unprecedented discounts to all material in his shop. Mr. Pasarge’s children, after whom the shop is named, had suggested that he sell saris for a rupee each to help poor women who were affected by demonetisation.
“What can I say? The one rupee sari scheme has brought me luck, I think,” he manages to say, with a broad grin, amid dealing with the countless customers that flood his shop. “I will not close shop, I will keep growing,” he said.
The crowds continue to swell in front of the second shop that he started near his old shop next to the district hospital compound.
Though he has stopped the “A sari a rupee” scheme, he has introduced several similar schemes instead. They include saris for ₹ 20, ₹ 165, and ₹ 265. He is also selling silk saris with a face value of ₹ 2,000 at ₹ 450, and a pair of shirt and trousers pieces at one fourth the actual price.
The surprise package is the wedding offer where you can walk away with a steel cupboard, refrigerator, bed or other household material, if your total purchase crosses a certain limit. Mr. Pasarge says he is not making losses.
While you can get all the offers at all times of the day, you will have to wait before the shop between 10 a.m. and noon, if you want the ₹ 20 sari.
“We had 12 workers. Now we have 26,” says Pushpak Kumar, store manager. “Our workers are like honeybees. They work without rest or break for over 12 hours a day. They go home at 11 p.m., but are back by 10 a.m. the next day,’’ Mr. Kumar says.
“The ‘A sari a rupee’ scheme brought us wide publicity. Newspapers and TV channels covered us as if there was nothing else happening in the city. That helped us immensely. Secondly, word of mouth spread far and wide. Now we are having customers from across the border in Telangana and Maharashtra. The lord has blessed us. It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who gave us this opportunity and we will continue to support him,” the owner said.
