In the recent years, India has started to embrace the idea of vending machines.
With consumers still recovering from the rumbles of demonetization, almost every sector faced the opportunity to expand their businesses in a different direction and be more present with the times.
This recent development also led to the breaking of many myths that people had towards purchasing and running a vending machine business like:
1. VMs reduce job opportunities
The pretence that most vendors have that a vending machine not only steals their consumers from them but is also responsible for hampering their livelihood, has been proven wrong.
A vending machine provides a regular income and provides good business to the vendor of the vending machine. He/She is able to provide more variety of items in much lesser space, saving his/her cost of rent while being up to date with the times and also earn more income by selling their screen space for advertisement.
2. The direct transfer of money from the machine to the Vendors Bank Account
With recent developments to support cashless and UPI transactions, once a customer makes the payment for a commodity.
Instead of the old system where a designated person was appointed to collect the notes from the machine at the end of every single day compromising his and the cash in hand’s safety and security. The money is now directly transferred to the vendor’s account without any middleman affecting the transaction.
3. Introduction of Cashless Transactions
The problem of handling of money faced by the consumers which referred to the difficulty in acceptance of notes and lack of change for big bills has been solved with the introduction of cashless transactions involving agents like UPI, Paytm, PhonePe etc.
Which supports this new development. E-wallets also help make the transaction faster and easier. The exact amounts can be directly transferred to the machines without facing any problems.
4. Better Technology to vend 5 items at one go
With improvements constantly being made, to make the vending machine experience better and easier. Start-ups like “Wendor” have managed to develop a state of the art motherboard which allows a customer to vend up to 5 items under 30 seconds from a vending machine at a given period of time. This improves the customer’s experience and also helps improve sales.
5. Instant refund technology in case of a failed transaction
Wendor has developed a Vend-Sensor technology where if the machine doesn’t vend the item selected by a customer at a given point of time. The machine automatically refunds the customers money back to his/her account.
This helps make the vending machine experience more reliable and simple for a consumer, who would feel a sense of safety while using the machine in the future.