Santhe is a kannada word which translates to “a local market that is conducted on certain days of the week wherein local customers and local vendors come together for buying and selling of groceries, mainly the agricultural produce including fruits and vegetables”. Although there are no exact records of when and how the term Santhe was coined, the concept of local town or village market has been in existence since the human beings invented trade of goods and services. This concept of local markets or fairs conducted on a specific day of a week has been known to exist across multiple cultures and is still conducted in almost all villages and towns in almost all countries in one form or the other.
Traditionally Santhe has been mostly a village fair that was usually conducted on Sundays or on Tuesdays. Typically, fresh farm produce like vegetables and fruits are sold in the Santhe along very few merchandises of personal care or home care products. In some cases, even cattle are traded in these weekly Santhe events, although fresh cut meat is not a usual commodity sold and bought in the Santhe.
Santhe has not lost its charm even today. Metro city like Bengaluru (former Bangalore) still hosts many forms of Santhe, besides the traditional form of Santhe held in Key localities of the city. For example, the regular Yelahanka Santhe and Yeshwanthpur Santhe held every Sunday are still very popular in Bangalore North and the KR Puram Santhe attracts a lot of people in Bangalore East.
Besides these there are several other forms of Santhe that the local communities or the Bengaluru city administration conducts. Some of them are Bhoomi Santhe (Bhoomi Santhe | Bhoomi Network) typically for eco organic product, Chirta Santhe and Bengaluru Santhe mainly conducted by the administration bodies like Chitrakala Parishath (Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath – Gallery | Museum | Art shop) focusing on buying and selling of different forms of arts and paintings. Besides Bengaluru, Santhe is a common occurrences in almost all major cities of Karnataka.
Equivalents of the word Santhe are also prevalent in many south Indian languages. It’s called as “Santa” (not to be mistaken for Santa Claus) in Telugu, “Cantai” in Tamil and in most other north Indian languages it usually translates to “Mandi”. As one might be aware there are numerous languages in India and so, it is obvious that there are different terms or phonetics used to describe the same concept in different parts of the country. Despite the diversity of the languages and words, the concept of a local markets for fresh fruits and vegetables brings people together and fosters community and continues to do so even to this day. The concept of Santhe is a testament to the fact that the trade has been one of the major driver of growth of human civilization both culturally and economically.
We, the team Santhe, founded in Bengaluru have chosen the name Santhe for our Brand as it resonates so very well with our vision of bringing together the local customers with local grocery shops and supermarkets to provide value add for both cohort of users. The customers can use our Santhe App to create and manage their grocery shopping list. Whenever the customers are ready to buy groceries they can easily send their grocery list to local grocery stores and supermarkets via the Santhe App. The local grocery stores, Kirana stores and supermarkets can then access the customers’ grocery shopping list via the Santhe Merchant App. Once the list is available, the local shops and supermarkets can then easily add prices and discounts to send an offer to the customer. The customer can now compare between multiple offers from different shops and choose the best grocery deal. Thus now the customer gets the best prices for groceries and the local grocery shops get an opportunity to participate in online commerce to grow their business. Feel free to download and try our apps using the below links.
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