ONDC to evaluate etailers based on commitment, says CEO Thampy Koshy

By Daisy On Apr 27, 2023

The government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) will continually evaluate the performance and commitment of any platforms joining the network with respect to their contribution towards the progress of ONDC, chief executive Thampy Koshy told ET when asked whether ONDC will be removing platforms that don’t have their main platform on the network, as per instructions of the union commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Monday.

Goyal had said, “a few days ago, there was a company that had created an ONDC-specific platform. That’s exactly what we don’t want to happen. Be on ONDC through your main platform.”

PhonePe on April 4 launched its ONDC-specific ecommerce platform Pincode. It did not comment on the issue. As ET has reported earlier on April 5, PhonePe has earmarked $10-15 million for Pincode.

A source from ONDC said, “The thought process behind what the minister said was that there should be no platform, not just Bengaluru-based, but also Big Tech, which should join ONDC without total commitment. If any player joins, their entire customer base should have visibility of ONDC. He wanted to send this message clearly and is not against any platform.”

Considering the investments being made by companies building ONDC-specific apps, they will remain committed to the cause, to get buyers, the source pointed out. “Investors may be interested only because of a company’s ONDC strategy,” the source said.

“The minister may not ask ONDC to shut down any platform but just ensure the entire customer base is visible to the network, which platforms will do eventually. For example, PhonePe has been asked to provide a plugin to Pincode in their application to make it visible to all its customers. Their numbers have been going up and will also add other cities soon,” the source quoted above said.

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The network is currently undertaking 5,000 to 6,000 retail orders per day. In April 2022, the network piloted a soft launch in five cities – Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Shillong, Bhopal and Coimbatore. Since then, ONDC has also started a beta pilot in Bengaluru and in some tier-II cities.

ONDC went live in some pin codes of Bengaluru on September 30, and has since expanded to several cities – two of which including Bengaluru are in the beta stage, and 181 in the alpha stage.

The network has 38 participants who are live on the network out of which eight are buyers, 24 are sellers, and seven are logistics service providers.

Also read: ETtech Explainer | ONDC: India’s bid to break ecommerce monopolies

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