Ecommerce Majors Amazon, Flipkart May Join ONDC Soon

Ecommerce majors Amazon and Flipkart may go live on Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) soon, DPIIT secretary Anurag Jain reportedly said.

“We have initiated conversations with all of them and initial indications are that they will join. The conversations with the top four are in various stages, and by and large they seem interested,” Jain said as quoted by Financial Express.

Jain also noted that ecommerce penetration in the country is roughly 5-7% and a large number of sellers and buyers remained outside of the ecommerce ecosystem.

To expand ONDC’s reach in smaller towns and onboard local kiranas and merchants, the ONDC is now being tested across 85 cities, managing director and chief executive officer T Koshy said.

The ONDC is taking initiatives including a one-time incentive programme that was rolled out starting Thursday. With this incentive programme, ONDC plans to scale its current network of more than 700 merchants across India in F&B and groceries to more than 20,000 merchants across various categories.

Earlier this week, logistics unicorn Delhivery went live on the government’s ONDC platform. The logistics major plans to enable sellers to leverage its extensive network of more than 18,000 pin codes in India.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal said last month that the state-backed platform already facilitated more than 2,200 transactions on the network. In November, ONDC had 21 active network participants and 22 operational pin codes across Bengaluru.

As per ONDC’s website, players including IDFC Bank, Kotak, Paytm, PhonePe, Shiprocket, and Dunzo are live on the platform.

The ONDC platform went live for beta testing in September this year and it is being touted as the UPI of the ecommerce industry.

To ensure correct disbursal of payments to right entities, ONDC has developed a framework to support reconciliation and settlements, which is expected to go live by January 2023.

While it has been tested successfully and implemented by Kotak Mahindra Bank and Protean, the integration of Bharat Bill Pay System (BBPS) with the ONDC ecosystem is in advanced stages of development.

According to an Inc42 report, India’s ecommerce market is estimated to reach a size of $400 Bn by 2030 from $100 Bn currently. The total number of online shoppers in the country is projected to rise to 350 Mn by 2025 from 165 Mn currently.