At the Sunday market in Garbada, in the Dahod district of Gujarat, cattle are sold through brokers called koydiyas. Two brokers clasp hands and cover them with a handkerchief. They settle the price through “a series of coded finger movements,” Gujarat Samachar reported in November 2025.
Only the people involved know the code.
Bohni is the first sale of the day. Many shopkeepers believe that it “establishes the seller’s luck” for the rest of the day. Some hold out for full price in cash. Others lower the price to close the first sale quickly.
Buyers have duties too. “Unless the price is egregious, it is considered good manners for customers to be generous,” Wikipedia notes. A trusted customer may even be allowed to name the price.
On Linking Road in Bandra, Mumbai, the street stalls sell sandals and other goods at prices that are open to bargaining. “You bargain, you pout, you make an offer and casually stroll away, hoping to be called back,” Business Standard described it in 2012. One shopper brought a pair of sandals down from 100 rupees to 75.
“It’s a game, and both sides know it.”
Mahatma Gandhi practiced law in South Africa from 1893. In one of his first cases, he persuaded the two parties to take their dispute to an arbitrator and settle it. He wrote that he had realized “the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder.”
“This lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases.”
The Mediation Act of 2023 provides for community mediation. It covers “any dispute likely to affect peace, harmony and tranquillity amongst the residents or families of any area or locality.” Such a dispute may be settled “through community mediation with prior mutual consent of the parties to the dispute.”
Under Section 43, a panel of three community mediators is formed to help the parties reach a settlement.
Under Section 37 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, a consumer complaint can leave the courtroom. “At the first hearing of the complaint after its admission, or at any later stage,” a district commission may find that the dispute can be “settled by mediation in accordance with the provisions of Chapter V.”
The parties are then asked to agree in writing to mediation.
“Payment scams and delays are common problems for textile traders in Surat,” Apparel Resources noted in March 2025. That month it reported that the Federation of Surat Trade and Textile Associations had formed a 16-member arbitration panel, chaired by a retired judge from Delhi.
The panel offered traders a way to settle payment disputes without police complaints or court cases.
Zerodha, an Indian stockbroker founded in 2010, says it has never paid for advertising. “So the only way we could grow was through word of mouth and customer referrals,” its founder Nithin Kamath wrote in 2025.
In January 2025 Inc42 reported that Zerodha had 1.6 crore users and that “30% of its users came via referrals from existing customers.” Kamath has said that referrals stayed steady after the company stopped paying incentives for them.
In July 2015 weavers in Surat’s Sachin industrial area decided “not to do business with merchants who do not provide valid references.” A committee of the Sachin Weavers’ Welfare Association was to cross-verify the merchants’ details.
The same market also shares warnings. In January 2026 the Federation of Surat Trade and Textile Associations announced plans to “publicly name textile distributors defaulting on payments beyond the 180-day credit period,” on a mobile app.
Business Network International, BNI, organizes local chapters whose members pass business referrals to one another. In June 2023 BNI India reported “50,830 members across 1080 chapters in 121 cities.”
By August 2026 it reported more than 75,300 members. BNI announced that India had overtaken the United States as its largest country by membership.