But the transition to the Web has not been easy for retail's giants.
He said he frequented Mr. Agarwal's shop — but also the Easy Day retail outlet that Bharti has opened down the street.
Even though the barriers to entry for stock trading have come down (with tools like Robinhood making investing in stocks almost dangerously easy), many retail investors are still not informed enough to make systematic decisions on their investments.
Moreover, it aims to unify national tax laws and make it easier for retail investors to move their money across borders.
While such funds have made the buying and selling of commodities and other complicated financial assets easier for retail investors, they have given these investors access to products that they may not understand.
Traditionally limited to institutional investors and high-net-worth clients, J.P. Morgan is about to make it easier for retail investors to gain access at the IPO price.
To support a stock market in free-fall (but still up 66% over the past year and a half), the government now wants to make it easier for retail investors to buy on margin.
"It's easy to view retail as a commercial, cynical business, but when you look at these lovingly created shops it becomes something very different," says Stones.
Even in America, 10m households had no bank access in 2011, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a regulator, and 24m households are underbanked, lacking easy access to retail banking facilities.
