NEW DELHI: Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an initiative of the Commerce Ministry, has completed 4,000 successful transactions as part of beta testing, a top government official told TNIE.
ONDC has on-boarded its first handloom weavers from Kancheepuram, to sell their products through ONDC across India with support from the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).
“In addition to products, ONDC is also working with the Kerala government to scale its pilot in open mobility across Kerala. Besides this, it is also working with developmental organisations like SIDBI and NABARD to on-board social sector organisations and farmers producers’ organisations(FPOs),” the official said. He also informed that ONDC has on-boarded four social sector enterprises that are life to sell their products across India.
The governments and state bodies of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, J&K and Madhya Pradesh have already signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ONDC, while Karnataka and West Bengal have initial engagement.
The commerce and industry ministry launched the pilot phase of ONDC in April last year, in five cities – Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Shillong and Coimbatore. It went live for the public in September 2022, in grocery and F&B categories. In December, it made a tier-2 debut in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.
Local shop owners across segments, such as mobility, grocery, food order and delivery, hotel booking and travel, can start selling their products online by joining ONDC using any ONDC-compatible seller applications of their choice, where the terms of business are favourable to them.
Through ONDC, small businesses will have multiple options to be discoverable over the network and conduct business on their own terms. This discoverability will be universal to all buyers on the network irrespective of the application the buyer uses on the web.