F&B Giant Pepsico Joins ONDC Bandwagon

The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has onboarded the food and beverage giant Pepsico on its platform. 

Pepsico is one of India’s leading consumer products companies which houses brands such as Lay’s, Pepsi, Quaker, Tropicana & Gatorade. 

Through this partnership, Pepsico expects to expand product discoverability and extend the customer base through the ONDC-affiliated seller applications. 

In a joint statement with ONDC, PepsiCo India President Ahmed ElSheikh said, “At PepsiCo India, the focus is to maximise choices on how consumers want to source our products.  We are always looking to innovate our go-to-market models.”

According to ElSheikh, the integration with ONDC will help the global F&B giant leverage the latest technology platform solutions, making it faster and more flexible in its market approach while enhancing consumer experiences.

Commenting on the development, ONDC MD & CEO T Koshy said, “PepsiCo India can now reach a wider customer base while offering expanded choices for buyers on the network.”

With this, Pepsico is all set to join the host of food and beverage brands like Rebel Foods, Wow! Momo, Red Bull, ITC, etc on ONDC. Earlier in June, it also saw Marico’s Saffola joining ONDC platform. 

In July, ONDC announced that its daily retail orders crossed the 35,000 mark with Delhi-NCR and  Bengaluru contributing more than 11,000 and 7,000 orders, respectively. The platform was recording as much as 40% sales in Bengaluru, followed by other metro cities like Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad. 

The lower delivery charges offered by ONDC have raised concerns about its potential threat to established foodtech giants such as Zomato and Swiggy. However, brokerage firm Jefferies said in a report that ONDC does not pose any threat to the existing players. According to Jefferies, the platform’s growth is attributed to the incentives. If those are lifted, either the customers or sellers will have to compensate for it. 

As per Koshi’s statement, the number of restaurants on the platform stands at 50,000 across 172 cities now, while it stood at only 500 in February. Further, ONDC aims to double the restaurant count by the end of this year. 

Meanwhile, ONDC is also looking to add startups to the platform through multiple initiatives. Recently, Google Cloud launched an accelerator programme for the government-backed network. Also, Antler India launched a venture platform, Antler ONDC to provide resources, an expert network, community and capital to founders building on the platform.