NRAI In Talks With ONDC To End Zomato-Swiggy Duopoly On Food Deliveries

The National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has held talks with officials from the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) on Tuesday (June 21) to facilitate restaurants joining the network for a pilot project.

According to a Moneycontrol report, a note prepared by ONDC on collaboration with restaurants read, “With multiple NPs (network partners) offering their services on the open network with no pre-filters, it will help break away from current monopolisation/cartelisation of the online food delivery ecosystem.”

The report added that talks have been held with an executive of one of the top pizza chains in the country for the chain to join the ONDC as well.

Launched on December 31, 2021, the ONDC is the Centre’s ambitious project to bring an open ecommerce network with multiple partners, ecommerce players and industries to operate on a single, open digital commerce platform, to allow users a seamless ecommerce experience in the country.

Under the ONDC system, restaurant network providers (RNPs) may focus only on aggregating restaurants. The RNPs will then onboard such restaurants onto the ONDC network and manage them afterwards. 

The RNPs will also educate the restaurants on how to work on their online business skills, packaging and hygiene norms and ensure that the food preparations are as per the service level agreements (SLAs).

Further, RNPs will get support from other NPs to build the customer pipeline and the delivery infrastructure.

This is another avenue that the ONDC might expand in over the coming months. Agritech has also emerged as one of the target industries, as the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is working with ONDC to organise the NABARD-ONDC Grand Hackathon.

The aim of the hackathon is to bring ideas to take ecommerce to agriculture and help farmers and agritech startups and SMEs get involved in digital commerce.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is developing the digital commerce platform, which is currently running a pilot programme across five cities in the country. The government is targeting a rollout across a hundred cities over the next six months.

Around 80+ merchants and digital platforms have been already looking to jump on the ONDC bandwagon, including the likes of Google, Paytm and others. Across India’s startup ecosystem, around 24 startups and unicorns are looking to onboard ONDC, which includes the likes of Dunzo and PhonePe.

Incidentally, ONDC has also attracted investments from across various industries. India’s public and private banks, in particular, have shown a keen interest in ONDC.

The likes of Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank have all invested a collective INR 65 Cr in the government’s ambitious digital commerce platform, picking up a total 40.86% stake in the same.