Proxgy to launch Kadi, a smartwatch for street vendors, for UPI payments

Kadi is designed to empower those who operate beyond the conventional retail setup

When Pulkit Ahuja, the founder of Proxgy, met this hawker who refused to accept digital payment because he had no charging facility for the sound box, neither a secured place to stick his QR code in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar central market, the idea of Kadi  UPI Smartwatch was born.

Priced at Rs 1,000, this smartwatch is designed to empower street vendors and merchants who operate beyond the conventional retail setup. It replaces the need for sound boxes . The UPI watch does not need any additional shelf space nor any charging for up to five days. Additionally, it provides health reporting and insurance starting at Re 1 per day.

“While India is on track to get over 100 million merchants on the UPI platform, it's crucial to recognise that millions of these potential beneficiaries are street vendors and hawkers who work without the luxury of shop counters or smartphone access. This is where Kadi steps in. By replacing the need for sound boxes and offering a compact, user-friendly alternative, the UPI watch empowers these individuals to participate in the digital economy with unprecedented ease,” said Ahuja.

He said unlike the traditional IMPS, NEFT and RTGS services, where the sender and the receiver get an SMS notification confirming the transaction, UPI framework transactions generally don’t get communicated through SMS.

Proxgy serves some of India’s biggest PSU banks, private banks and fintech companies with AudioCubes and AudioCube Minis (advanced and customised sound boxes for UPI payment alerts). “We plan to start providing the Kadi UPI watch exclusively to these clients initially so that our existing clients have a distinct merchant and street vendor on boarding advantage followed by introducing the Kadi through the more holistic B2B channel partners,” said Ahuja. Proxgy plans to start making its first B2B bulk delivery on Diwali.

The Centre’s contactless digital payments framework, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), crossed 10 billion monthly transactions in August, said the Reserve Bank’s non-profit agency, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).