There are an estimated 12 million Kirana stores in India, which collectively account for 90% of the grocery retail market. In recent years, the advent of organized retail chains and the growth of e-commerce platforms has eaten into the market share of Kirana stores. Estimates suggest that by 2030, the share of organized retail may account for 30–35% of the grocery retail market. In such a scenario, Kirana stores need to compete effectively to retain their competitive advantage and regain market share. Digitizing Kirana stores may offer the advantage of personalized human experience and trust combined with the efficiency and power of the digital economy. In 2021, the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was launched in India to bring Kirana stores onto the internet and provide them with a level playing field in the booming e-commerce industry. This research-informed-design study focuses on how the Kirana stores can engage with ONDC in order to compete with organized retail and e-commerce platforms. A participatory design process was used with interviews, participant observation, ideation, prototyping and testing to develop an inventory-management-system for the Kirana stores. The solution consists of a weighing-scale integrated with a Machine Learning (ML) enabled camera that makes inventory-management easy while retaining the shopkeeper’s usual workflow. Field testing of the proof-of-concept achieved 80% accuracy for the inventory-management-system. Future work includes field testing the prototype in a larger sample of Kirana stores and adding more retail items to train and improve the accuracy of the ML-enabled inventory-management-system.