As many as 125 startups, including unicorns such as Nithin Kamath’s Zerodha, Alakh Pandey-led Physics Wallah, EaseMyTrip, and Cars24 have committed to joining the Indian government-backed the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).
Signing letter of intent to join the ONDC
The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade stated that 12 unicorns—including EaseMyTrip, OfBusiness, Winzo, Livspace, GlobalBees, Pristyn Care, Cars24, Physics Wallah, PolicyBazaar, and Zerodha—signed a Letter of Intent to join the ONDC.
“These Letters of Intent signify the potential of ONDC and the eagerness of leading startups in the country to collaborate with the platform,” the DPIIT said.
“We’ve realised that there should be a concerted effort from DPIIT to onboard startups to the ONDC. A big concern for startups is to find the markets, so ONDC onboarding can solve it,” Sanjiv Singh, joint secretary at the DPIIT, said.
Aiming to democratise digital commerce
ONDC, which was launched on December 31, 2021, aims to democratize digital commerce by creating more visibility for products and services, thereby generating additional revenue for sellers.
The network’s larger vision is to bring small, local sellers into the digital fold, many of whom have never been on any digital platform. The ONDC is now fully operational across India, with more than 500,000 sellers on the platform. Notably, over 70% of these are small or medium-sized sellers.
T Koshy, MD and CEO of ONDC, said that aside from mobility, where demand is hyper-local, around 70% of orders are coming from small towns.
“What is encouraging is that, while the transactions are still small…We have recorded transactions from more than 1,000 cities and towns across the country in the past few months. And there are more than 600 cities where we have more than 100 daily orders consecutively for three months,” he told reporters.
Amazon, Flipkart’s integration with the ONDC
However, it may take some time before e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart fully integrate with the network.
According to Koshy, established players will need to make adjustments before integrating with ONDC. Since Amazon and Flipkart are large platforms with their own existing setups, migrating to a new system and network will be a time-consuming process.
