Graduation Project — 2026
Unitedworld Institute of Design
A Systemic Proposal for
Clarity · Control · Growth
A product-service system for the kirana stores that carry the weight of everyday retail — written as a book, rebuilt as an experience.
Aditya Ranka — Industrial Designer
This is dedicated to you, for showing up every day and sustaining the backbone of Indian retail. Grateful for all that you have built and continue to carry. May you be blessed with strength and a long, enduring journey.
India has always been a land of trading, and at its core lie offline channels of business — led by kirana shops, an ecosystem so widespread and unique to India. But the nature of competition has changed. Where competition used to be another human mind, this time it is data-backed, technologically advanced, systemized and automated.
This project is an attempt to understand that shift — and respond to it with a structured approach.
Quick commerce has redrawn how India buys its daily needs — and the stores that once anchored every neighbourhood are quietly disappearing. The numbers below come from the research behind this book.
0
kirana stores shut in two years
0
days — that is all it took
0+
lives touched by the collapse
Figures as documented in the book, from industry research and field observation
Read it like a book.
Feel it like a system.
The 3-Layer Approach — moving a store from solving for data, to solving for actionable clarity, to solving for expansion and growth — held together by the strategy diamond, system maps and touchpoints that keep every decision aligned.
The 3-Layer Approach — the outcome of the project
Industrial Designer · Semester 8, UID Gandhinagar
"Coming from a background of Marwaris and lalas, I understood the language of business long before the language of design. Now I use that language for designing."
A keen backer of design as a management tool — growing into a strategic system designer who runs his firm like a businessman, in the smartest and coolest ways. Guided on this project by Prof. Shhyam Prajapati, Dean of Industrial Design, Unitedworld Institute of Design.
The author's full story→Leave a note
for the author.
The book opened with a dedication to shopkeepers. This is where you write back — a thought, a memory of your corner store, a word for Aditya.
"Reminds me of my grandfather's shop in Indore."
"This book reads like a market walk. Beautiful work."