Well, it is high times for digital payments. So, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted wallet licence to a Chennai-based company called HipBar which is looking to sell only booze online. Just booze, nothing else. But HipBar is taking the drinking very seriously and believes it can make a dent by using the wallet function to pay for alcohol online. Currently, the venture has an Android and iOS app which allows users to reserve a bottle of alcohol at a drinking establishment and pay for it online. Users will have to pick up the bottle at the nearest store, however, Prasanna Natarajan, founder of HipBar explained. Drinking laws in India currently don't permit delivery of alcohol from retail stores. HipBar started as an internal project to help market the brands of Sipping Spirits (SS), a company Natarajan founded back in 2007. "SS is a craft spirits company that manufactures and markets several niche brands out of its Goa-based facility. Eventually, in 2015, HipBar turned from a raw idea to a business, when it was formally incorporated," Natarajan explained. There have been some efforts though to start online delivery of alcohol in India but it doesn't seem to have panned out well. There was LetsBuyDrink.com which operated as a marketplace in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Mumbai but it shut down. Similar efforts by WineBazaar.in or Bozzr.com eventually led them to close down. There is, however, Bangalore-based Madhuloka, a retailer which has 17 stores in the city. (We still don't know under what laws the website operates…
