BENGALURU: Payments app PhonePe on Tuesday launched its hyperlocal commerce app ‘Pincode’, which is built on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) platform. At the launch of the new app, its co-founder and CEO Sameer Nigam said, “Pincode is now live in Bengaluru and will expand city by city. We aim to have 1 lakh orders a day by December.” He added that for the consumer a category or a tab will not solve the problem and that they need a shopping app.
The new app will have six categories including fashion, pharma and food. This launch comes three months after its full separation from Flipkart. The Pincode, a buyer app, will promote local shopkeepers and sellers and hopes to digitally connect each city’s consumers with all their neighbourhood stores that they usually buy from offline. He also said at the launch that they will not get into dark stores or logistics business.
Speaking at the launch event, co-founder and non-executive chairman of Infosys Nandan Nilekani said, “ONDC is the next big thing. Quick commerce will be reimagined with ONDC.” He added that in the last three years, we have seen 50 million QR codes being deployed, and this is an example of how interoperability can turbocharge payment in India.
PhonePe believes ONDC can foster the rapid growth of a new hyperlocal ecommerce business model. Apart from local buyers and sellers, such a model will also benefit other ecosystem participants like the last mile logistics and inventory management players, it said.
From Meesho to Paytm, SpiceMoney, many companies are on the government-backed ONDC platform. ONDC aims to democratize digital commerce, moving it away from platform-centric models like Amazon and Flipkart to an open network.