GROWING INTEGRATION

Soon enough more and more players will onboard themselves on to ONDC, thus offering greater options to buyers

Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was always meant to support small retailers that are losing out on the battle of e-deliveries. And it was a huge surprise when a BigTech company like Microsoft announced that it was commencing onboarding efforts with ONDC.

The tech behemoth intends to introduce social e-commerce, which is a group buying experience in the Indian market via the government of India’s initiative to democratize digital commerce. This could be potentially huge considering that the Indian e-commerce industry is anticipated to reach $400 billion by 2030, increasing at a 19% CAGR.

The Open Network for Digital Commerce, a unified payments interface-type protocol, would democratize the e-commerce business by onboarding 6 crore small retailers, said Union Minister Piyush Goyal, at a recent event in Bengaluru. ONDC will provide strength to the small merchants to compete with the larger players. More buyers and sellers will join the network in the future and ONDC is hoped to provide equal opportunity for all. As traction builds, it will lead to many start-ups mushrooming all over the country instead of power and wealth being concentrated in the hands of few, Goyal added.

Meanwhile, Indian start-ups raised $22.9 billion in funding in the first ten months of 2022, down 30% compared to the same period last year.

ONDC ACROSS THE COUNTRY

A rollout of ONDC’s beta phase for Delhi is expected in early December, after the recent launch in Bengaluru, across 16 PIN codes.

The government-backed ONDC has already facilitated more than 2,200 transactions on the network, Goyal said.