BENGALURU: The government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce; which has been receiving enormous interest from tech companies, banks, e-commerce firms and start-ups; will introduce new verticals such as home decor, electronics and fashion, among others, from December.
Currently, grocery and food verticals are available in Bengaluru. ONDC went live with a beta launch in Bengaluru in September-end. In a month’s time, it is also planning to launch a business-to-business (B2B) testing phase with the groceries vertical, and with three logistics players coming on board, inter-city is
also possible now, said officials.
Speaking about ONDC, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday said the platform gives small retailers an opportunity to provide their services, and products to buyers across the country. Goyal said ONDC has the ability to transform e-commerce and one can buy not only in India but also from everywhere in the world as the platform gains traction and builds up more buyers and sellers.
When asked whether big e-commerce players will be sidelined, the minister said, “We are not trying to sideline anybody. In fact, we will take everybody on board, just like UPI has taken everybody big and small players on board.”
Goyal added that this provides strength to small players to compete with large ones. Soon, buyers will have wider choices and verticals to pick their favourite ones and communication can also happen in local languages.
Apart from Bengaluru, ONDC will start its testing in other states and cities soon. Currently, in Kerala mobility comes under ONDC, and anybody can book a cab/auto in Kochi, and the same service will soon be available in other states too.
“In a five-year horizon, anybody who has any product or service to sell will make their catalogue digitally visible in the open network,” ONDC CEO T Koshy said. About 21 players have gone live on the network and over 2,000 transactions have been held in Bengaluru.
“As of today, over 600 entities are trying to integrate with us. Every week about 15 of them are getting added and out of the 600, 70% are start-ups. It’s not just small companies, you have the big companies like Unilever, Kotak Mahindra Bank and IDFC bank,” he added.
What is ONDC
ONDC is a set of specifications designed to foster open, unbundled and inter-operable open networks
It eliminates the dependency on a single platform
Consumers can place orders through buyer apps
The current market penetration of eCommerce, in terms of the overall economy, stands at 8%.
With ONDC, it is expected to grow to 25% in the next two years