When Open Community for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was conceptualised round three years in the past and launched in January final yr, it was meant to interrupt the stranglehold of e-commerce giants — Amazon, Flipkart, Zomato, Swiggy and their Friends.

One yr down the road, some milestones have been achieved. And loads is using on its success. A McKinsey report stated ONDC will allow a five-fold rise in India’s digital consumption to $340 billion.

Elevate Your Tech Prowess with Excessive-Worth Talent Programs

Providing FacultyCourseWeb site
IIM KozhikodeIIMK Superior Knowledge Science For ManagersGo to
Indian Faculty of EnterpriseISB Skilled Certificates in Product AdministrationGo to
Indian Faculty of EnterpriseISB Product AdministrationGo to

As per an Antler report, it’ll unleash an $80-billion alternative for startups. As per Redseer, it’ll generate $250 billion to $300 billion in gross merchandise worth.

Nevertheless, after being off to a promising begin, inevitable challenges have come up, which should be overcome to make ONDC a viable tech backbone in a rustic the place net commerce is more and more turning into a leitmotif of consumerism. However first, the chilly stats. Annual transactions for the present monetary yr to March 1 have touched 41.2 million.

This can be a close to eightfold enhance over its projections in the course of the proof of idea stage. When ONDC first raised funds in September 2021, the projected annual transactions for FY24 have been solely 5.63 million.

ONDC had raised Rs 180 crore in 2021-22 from 19 non-public and public establishments, together with banks, inventory exchanges and authorities our bodies similar to Small Industries Improvement Financial institution of India (SIDBI) and Nationwide Financial institution for Agriculture and Rural Improvement (NABARD) who invested Rs 10 crore every.

Uncover the tales of your curiosity


The community had commitments of as much as Rs 230 crore on the time and has an authorised capital of Rs 1,500 crore. The community makes it simpler for smaller gamers to get onboard with out paying a hefty fee — not like some e-commerce platforms — and select a logistics participant and cost associate from a number of accessible on the community. Nevertheless, the challenges that the community didn’t count on are that new entrants to e-commerce want help to begin operations, and that first mover startups want help in scaling up their operations. Whereas vendor apps onboard retailers, purchaser apps are buyer going through the place orders could be positioned. Purchaser apps demand a essential mass of merchandise, sellers and merchandise. ONDC additionally realised that synergy with classes like monetary companies and mobility is vital to worth technology. It has recognised extra motion is required to resolve conflicts and challenges confronted by totally different domains to make sure progress. The community hopes to extend e-commerce penetration within the nation to 25 per cent within the subsequent couple of years.

Consuming Swiggy & Zomato’s lunch?

Final yr, the community created social media buzz when it provided reductions on meals and beverage orders. Screenshots of payments for meals ordered on ONDC-compatible platforms have been additionally shared. Business consultants stated ONDC was making an attempt to outprice their competitors, and lots of requested whether or not it might be sustainable in the long term, as ONDC is funded by public banks and monetary establishments. The community merely stated it was supporting a chilly begin with incentives.

“Our incentive schemes are public and various, and is supposed as a catalyst. The nice factor is that many sellers within the community are actually excited in regards to the freedom that they’ve to return out with their very own schemes and affords, way more competitively,” stated T Koshy, the chief govt of ONDC.

A minimum of a number of hundred manufacturers on ONDC at the moment have their very own fascinating affords whether or not it’s meals and beverage, or different domains.

The order supply

The community has scaled up quickly to clock 2.6 lakh orders per day. “Just a few days in the past, we hit a peak of two.87 lakh orders per day,” Koshy stated. One other side the community can boast of is that greater than 60 per cent of its orders are from tier-2 cities.

“Orders are coming in frequently from Jammu, Kashmir, Leh, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh too,” Koshy stated. Beginning with a small base in September 2022 by a beta launch in Bengaluru, the community has slowly expanded its footprint throughout each services.

As we speak it’s dwell in varied sectors like grocery, FMCG, meals and beverage, ride-hailing, agriculture merchandise, trend and attire, well being and wellness, magnificence and private care, electronics and home equipment, dwelling and kitchen, business-to-business transactions, exports, metro ticketing and monetary merchandise.

Classes within the pipeline embrace industrial tools, medical and lab provides, toys and video games, books and stationery, sports activities tools, automotive provides, fibre and yarns, journey, wellness and care, tourism and leisure, authorized companies, restore, upkeep and at-home companies and warehousing.

Month-to-month orders on the community have risen from 1,000 in January final yr to 82 lakh in March this yr. From 8,500 sellers then, there are greater than 3.8 lakh now, of which non-mobility accounts for 1.05 lakh.

Nevertheless, sources from Pai Platforms, which was earlier Paytm E-commerce, which is each a purchaser app and a vendor app on ONDC, had earlier informed ET that one of many major challenges presently confronted is enhancing its provider base.

Many sellers discovered on well-liked platforms like Swiggy, Zomato or Amazon usually are not but on ONDC, they added. Incorporating extra vital gamers with in depth attain is seen as a useful transfer. Pai is targeted on broadening its array of choices, together with prime eating places like these discovered on Swiggy and Zomato, to draw extra customers, they stated.

The million-dollar query

Dilip Vamanan, co-founder of SellerApp, which is among the earliest vendor apps to be onboarded on ONDC, informed ET in March that the corporate estimates to cross 50,000 orders.

“Exterior of Amazon and Flipkart, sellers are capable of generate some constant orders, which is nice. Sellers have began understanding there’s a brand new channel, and types, B2C, D2C and CPG, are contemplating this to be vital,” he stated.

Nevertheless, the million-dollar query is, how will you generate a enterprise out of it, provided that e-commerce is operation-heavy. “I don’t assume even the core enterprise items of Amazon and Flipkart have been worthwhile. So, how does one make a enterprise out of it? That’s one thing no person understands,” Vamanan stated.

“We’ve 18 to twenty folks dedicatedly engaged on ONDC. The one per cent (fee) of the typical order worth of fifty,000 orders this month won’t even cowl the price of one or two builders we’ve employed.”

The dimensions required to interrupt even after which turn out to be worthwhile is a really lengthy shot, he stated. For operating dayto-day operations, one might want to take a look at exterior funding, he stated. “Unbundling will generate extra information for the sellers, and it will give an edge to sellers within the coming years,” he added.

Moreover, there are additionally problems with settlement that also must be resolved on the community, he stated. Magicpin, which is each a purchaser and vendor app on ONDC, had began with the meals and beverage area and created a SaaS platform, and have become a expertise service supplier for purchaser apps.

“We took out our entrance finish and created an ONDCin-a-box expertise for any giant purchaser app to simply drop that have into their app. We began with Paytm. It gave visibility to ONDC on its homepage, however if you click on on that, you’ll land into an expertise that might be powered by Magicpin,” stated chief govt Anshoo Sharma. “We’re the most important vendor app within the meals ecosystem.”

Distinctive QR codes

Not too long ago, for facilitating direct communication between prospects and sellers on the community, ONDC launched distinctive QR codes. This makes it simpler for patrons to achieve their favorite sellers on the community by any purchaser utility on the community.

Sellers may share it on their storefronts, socials, enterprise playing cards, web sites and adverts to increase their attain. From 24 community individuals, there are actually 81. Whereas the community was lively in three area classes to begin with, it has risen to 13.

The cities or districts that gave greater than 100 orders monthly within the final three months labelled as ‘countable cities’ by the community rose to 622 in March, protecting virtually all of India, which is a rise from two serviceable cities.

In February alone, mobility accounted for 52.8 per cent of the 71.14 lakh orders on the community, which implies there have been 37.56 lakh mobility orders and 33.57 lakh non-mobility orders, accounting for 47.2 per cent of the whole month-to-month orders.

“On the client aspect, Paytm, Snapdeal, Magicpin, Pincode, Mystore, Rapidor, NoBrokerHood, Ola, and nStore are huge. These are purchaser apps who’ve introduced significant volumes of orders to the community. There are lots of extra who’re scaling up their presence,” Koshy stated.

The community estimates orders in March to be over 80 lakh. Purchaser apps within the mobility sector embrace Namma Yatri, Yatri Sathi, Yaary, Rapido and Redbus. Some potential purchaser apps anticipated to supply mobility companies on ONDC sooner or later embrace Google Maps, Paytm, NobrokerHood and PhonePe.

“The height that we noticed in sooner or later in mobility was 1.6 lakh rides. Within the mobility sector, we now have greater than two lakh drivers. We’ve autos in six cities, cabs in three, and metro in two cities. In some cities, we now have autos, taxis and the metro on the community,” Koshy stated.Whereas Chennai Metro is already dwell, Kochi Metro must also go dwell anytime.

“Among the many 15 metros in India, many are in lively discussions with ONDC to go dwell, together with Kanpur,” he added. Shan MS, chief progress officer at Juspay, the corporate that developed Namma Yatri (it has accomplished over 3.06 crore journeys and has 2.51 lakh drivers), stated that Juspay’s method has been totally different from different mobility platforms.

“We empowered our drivers to offer superior customer support and earn extra. We’re a tech enabler, not an middleman. Transitioning from a commission-based to a subscription based mostly mannequin is only one instance of our dedication,” he stated.

In non-mobility retail purchases in March, meals and drinks accounted for 20 per cent, trend for 12 per cent, grocery 10 per cent, dwelling and kitchen seven per cent, magnificence and private care 5, well being and wellness three, and electronics accounted for 2 per cent of the orders. Greater than 16,000 community individuals are in varied phases of integration with the community.

A number of the prime manufacturers, firms and platforms which were onboarded embrace Ola, Spar, Wow Momo, ITC, Sleepy Owl, Hindustan Unilever Restricted (HUL), McDonalds, Marico, Biryani Blues, Leaf, Giva, Dunzo, nStore, Domino’s Pizza, Paytm, Mystore, Boat, Pincode, P&G, Magicpin, Namma Yatri, and the Kochi Open Mobility Community.

“We’re on the lookout for many extra giant enterprises which have a big purchaser base to return onboard the community. If bankers come onboard on the client aspect and the vendor aspect, adoption of economic and nonfinancial merchandise will probably be quicker. Widespread Service Centres solely just lately got here onboard. Now we will increase to rural areas quicker,” Koshy stated.

Corporations like Ola are dwell on ONDC, each as a purchaser app and a logistics service supplier. Tata Digital just lately began its pilot testing with its tremendous app Tata Neu as a purchaser app within the meals and beverage area. HUL plans to onboard its community of greater than 10 lakh retailers and kirana shops throughout India to ONDC to have the ability to make all merchandise of the shop, not simply of HUL, dwell.

A number of the upcoming manufacturers that may quickly be accessible on the community embrace Aditya Birla, DMI Finance, Google, Nivea, Pepsi, Patanjali, Fynd, Chai Level, Ninjacart and Whirlpool.

Multinational firms like Google and Meta are additionally leveraging ONDC. Google Maps will quickly allow customers to ebook metro tickets. Google Cloud’s ONDC startup accelerator will even assist startups use Google’s AI and enormous language mannequin with ONDC. A programme was additionally just lately launched for small ONDC sellers to advertise utilizing platforms of Meta — Fb, Instagram and WhatsApp. Conversational purchaser and vendor apps will probably be constructed utilizing WhatsApp quickly.

Past typical e-commerce, handloom merchants say their month-to-month income on ONDC is nearly Rs 2 lakh, greater than their income on Amazon and Flipkart the place they earn between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000.

Farmer advantages

Greater than 5,900 farmer producer organisations (FPOs) have additionally been onboarded on the community who’ve facilitated greater than 30,000 transactions.

Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) and NABARD are onboarding FPOs enabling market linkages and growing farm incomes. Farmers can entry data on particular native mandi charges of assorted forms of produce and get direct entry to a number of mandis, or to trendy commerce retail, enabling them to promote their produce immediately at higher costs.

Farmers can even buy high quality enter supplies like seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and harvesting instruments on-line, which have been optimised for worth and high quality by the open community.

Digitally routed funds make cheaper formal credit score accessible to farmers. When farmers log into purchaser apps of their respective vernacular languages, relying on area, climate, and soil, they’re related to companies similar to crop planning, and demand forecasting, and are given enter advisory.

There’s a programme being deliberate by the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) to onboard greater than two lakh MSMEs in a single yr on ONDC.

This may assist enhance their attain and discoverability in world markets at decrease prices. Slightly than constructing every functionality on their very own, unbundling may present MSMEs with entry to specialised companies.

By enhancing worth discovery, it’ll additionally allow cost-efficient transport programs for exports and imports.

SIDBI is enabling self-help teams and clusters of artisans to entry e-commerce through ONDC. The community has additionally initiated monetary companies throughout 4 classes: Credit score, insurance coverage, investments (mutual funds), and extra merchandise (reward playing cards solely redeemable on ONDC).

“About seven profitable transactions have taken place the place credit score was given to creditworthy people in the previous few days,” Koshy stated.

Whereas for people, this facilitates unsecured private loans, for proprietors, it facilitates MSME vendor financing. Some early adopters embrace EasyPay, Tata Digital, DMI Finance, ABFL, Rapidor and IndiaLends.

Insurance coverage Dekho, Coverage Bazaar, Kotak Common, BAGIC and Nivesh are anticipated to return on board providing motor, well being, and marine insurance coverage.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here